Three for the price of one
by Izumi1909
Summary: Lalli survived what happened in Saimaa. His cousins did not. Yet they are still by his side eleven years later, helping him navigate the world. An expedition looks to hire on the cheap side just as the Keuruu autorities cross a line that prompts Lalli to leave while he still can. His "cousins" have their own plans: having Lalli make a friend before the expedition is over.
1. Prologue

**Prologue**

Torbjörn looked at the budget that Taru had revised to match the funds that they had actually been given, which were much less than initially planned:  
-So we're down to five crew members, and there's still not enough for proper salaries. No one will want to work for us. Unless we actually find people who will basically work for free.  
For some reason, his words put a smirk on Taru's face:  
-You know what? I think I may know where to find just what we need. How does getting three people and only have to pay one of them sound? If you're interested, the package will consist in a night scout with basic magic skills, a skald and mechanic, and an advanced mage. All three able to speak three languages.  
-That cousin you once told me about, by any chance? asked Trond.  
Taru nodded. Siv pitched in:  
-You mean "those cousins", right? You were just talking about three people.  
Taru pointed at the piece of paper on which she had done her calculations:  
-With that kind of money, anything decent you get will have at least one catch to it. The trick is to go for catches that are manageable. In the present case, I have to make two things clear. One is that you will need to believe in magic to realize what a good deal you are making. The other is that yes, I do mean a single cousin.


	2. Triple mind

**Chapter 1: Triple mind**

The thin young man with an angular face, who looked about Emil's own age, was wearing a light brown fur ear flap hat that had a red diamond on each ear flap and on the forehead flap, the latter of which was currently up. The hat looked a little too big for him compared to his other clothes. A hand-me-down, maybe? The young man left the arrival office, walked right past Emil, and crashed on one of the station's dirty sofas:  
-Sorry, seasick. Need a little moment.  
Emil came closer to him, but couldn't bring himself to actually sit down next to him:  
-I didn't expect you to speak Swedish.  
He answered without lifting his head up:  
-Nobody does. Are you Emil, by any chance?  
-Yes. So uuh... who am I talking to?  
-Tuuri. Don't mind Lalli and Onni quite yet. You'll be mostly speaking with me anyway.  
Emil let out a sigh of relief. Maybe it wasn't going to as hard as Torbjörn and Siv had made it out to be after all.  
-If you don't mind me asking... how does being a skald and a night scout at the same time work?  
The young man let out a giggle:  
-Taru said she had trouble explaining the exact situation to your uncle and aunt. I'm not surprised you got mistaken about it yourself. For now, consider that I have the normal sleep cycle of a night scout. Got a little sleep on the boat, it has the benefit of making seasickness a little more bearable. That reminds me, could you check when the train is leaving? Taru said there wouldn't be much time.

It turned out to be a good call, as their group had just the time to reach the train without too much of a hurry before it left. It was only after Emil had sat down on the bench that was separated from Lalli's by a small table, and noticing that Lalli was staring at him for some reason, that he realized that food had somehow gotten on his shirt. He went to the bathroom to tidy up.

Taru heard Lalli speaking to her in Finnish for the bench that was back to her own:  
-So... your new friends need to hire on the cheap side, and you suddenly remember we exist.  
The tone of voice was too solemn to be Tuuri:  
-Lalli? she asked tentatively.  
-You wish it was Lalli.  
She had been keeping enough tabs on the situation to know that Onni showing up was rarely a good sign. Fortunately, she had the perfect rebuke for him:  
-I'm surprised you let this happen. I would think such a thing would have a big "no" from you written all over it.  
-It would probably have, a few months ago. But higher-ups are talking about no longer letting him go out scouting anymore. It broke a deal that was already slanted against us, as far as I'm concerned. His scouting job is the only time during which he's really himself, when Tuuri and I are sleeping. We needed to remind the higher-ups that we have been cooperating with them all this time, not obeying them. My only objection to outright leaving was that we had nowhere to go besides the off-chance of getting hold of your ever-moving self. You're lucky your timing was right. It may actually be the only right thing you did in regards to us in the last eleven years.  
Taru's job in Keuruu had been extremely busy. So when the kid put in her care had turned out to be perfectly capable of taking care of himself and to actually prefer being alone to having company, it had been convenient. She'd known Grade A cats that were more demanding than Lalli. They had been no more than two people who happened to share a house. She'd ended up getting an opportunity for a job outside Keuruu within a week of Lalli joining the scouts and starting to make his own money. It was only by a letter received a few months after that that she had realized that she should have done more. She'd decided to head back, hoping to make up for her mistakes. But once there, she'd been asked to no longer visit him. Lalli's condition had developed an aspect to it that greatly interested some of the higher-ups. The Onni personality apparently had a source of magic of its own, completely separate from Lalli's. They had been afraid that whatever circumstances had enabled this to happen would go away if anything was changed in Lalli's life, so people had been starting to go out of their way to not interfere with his existing routine. She had seen the potential at the time, and left again. Taru couldn't help asking what had happened to that policy.  
-After six years, what was once going out of one's way becomes habit. They forgot that the experiment consisted mostly in finding out just how long the situation could last before becoming counterproductive, so they are changing things just to give themselves the impression they are not being idle about it. People are also starting to figure out that waiting for an opportunity to reproduce the situation is not a good plan.  
Reproducing the situation had been told to being akin to waiting for lightning to hit a tree instead of cutting it down with an axe. The equivalent of cutting the tree down was illegal, unethical and impractical, so people had been waiting for the metaphorical lightning strike ever since the secret behind Onni's separate source of magic have been discovered. The problem was that every single mage in Keuruu knew what that secret was, and because of it, actually all took extra precautions to not become "a second Lalli". The higher-ups couldn't even protest the precautions, as they had saved many lives and prevented even more injuries. This had been one benefit of letting Lalli's condition develop. Just not the one that the higher-ups had in mind.  
-It was meant to be an ice sculpture, only lasting through the winter and slowly melting when the spring comes. Winter was made to last longer by those who don't want it to melt, but it can start breaking if the winter lasts too long.  
Taru knew this to be Onni's recurring analogy for his separate source of power. Only the Keuruu mages and a few higher-ups, that did not include Taru, knew what he was actually talking about.  
-Tuuri told me that whatever Lalli used to fuel your magic wasn't going to be a problem.  
-It will not be. Our cooperation has included actively keeping it as it was for much longer than initially planned. This expedition will be our opportunity to let it pursue its natural evolution. Let the ice melt, so to speak. It may be gone by the time we come back. Lalli will still have the knowledge I acquired, it will help him manage with only his own power. In the meantime, your friend will still be getting Tuuri for free.

Emil came back, asked Lalli something in Swedish and got an enthusiastic answer. Tuuri was back. Emil eventually came back with a couple of meat sandwiches. A few minutes later, Emil went back to the dining car, and came back with another sandwich and what seemed to be a plate with a handful of sandwich meat slices on it. Torbjörn asked him a question while pointing at the plate when he went by their seats. After Emil answered and went back to Lalli, Torbjörn translated the conversation:  
-Apparently, Lalli only ate the meat in his sandwich, so Emil just got him more meat when they turned out to both still be hungry.  
Taru let out a sigh of relief:  
-I heard that Lalli developed a few unusual habits that show up no matter who's in charge. I was afraid the others would be put off by this. Even considering the fact that the others are all strange in their own way.  
No longer being seasick and now with a full stomach, Lalli's body was in shape to carry on with Tuuri's enthusiasm that resulted in asking Emil various questions, that Taru unfortunately couldn't understand.

Just as the train arrived in Mora, Taru remembered the clothing's decontamination process. Onni's hat was going to be considered clothing anyway, but Tuuri's voluntary trigger...  
-Lalli, are you carrying that book on yourself?  
-Yes.  
-You should put it in your luggage. It may fall out of your pocket while your clothes are decontaminated.

Whatever Taru has told him in Finnish prompted Lalli to pull a small leather-bound book out of his inner chest pocket. For some reason, it was kept closed by a thin black piece of leather cord, that had a knot at each tip, most likely intended to keep a couple of blue beads from falling off. The beads were the exact same shade of blue as Lalli's eyes. Emil only saw the item briefly, as Lalli quickly put it in one of his bags.  
-Do you mind if I ask what that is?  
-Just a book to teach children basic Icelandic. I got past that level years ago. But circumstances have made it extremely precious to me.  
Emil knew Lalli had lost many family members by the time he was eight years old, but didn't feel comfortable asking him about that quite yet.

Torbjörn, Siv and Taru had a few things to pick up at Torbjörn and Siv's home, that they now insisted on calling headquarters. Emil and Lalli ended up being alone in the study, where Lalli gave the files of their two other teammates a look. Reading Emil's own files prompted Lalli, or rather Tuuri, to ask a few question that he hadn't thought of on the train, mostly about the academic path he'd been following before joining the Cleansers. Emil asked a question of his own:  
-By the way, that thing about you being a mage. It's actually just some kind of fancy non-literal title, right? What does it really mean?  
Lalli's expression was unchanged, but Emil could feel an irritation in his voice that he hadn't encountered so far:  
-It means just what it sounds like. And you'll just have to believe it if we are going to be working together.  
-In that case, maybe you can show me a little magic. We have a little time.  
-You'll get a demonstration soon enough, just be patient. I'm not wasting my power just to prove something.  
-I bet I actually won't have seen a single bit of actual magic by the time the expedition is over.  
-I wouldn't mind making that bet. Lalli deserves to get a little more of that salary money anyway, and the more I speak with you, the less qualms I have about that money getting taken away from your own salary.  
Torbjörn came into the study:  
-Here you are. We are almost ready to go, so I might as well give you a briefing.  
Torbjörn showed Lalli the skald materials, then explained the unofficial book salvaging they wanted them to all do during the expedition. Lalli answered in the same irritated tone:  
-I knew there was something fishy about this expedition. Well, we can't escape fishy people, just choose the ones we'd rather work for. And I happen to mad enough at the Keuruu higher-ups that I'd still rather go on that expedition of yours.  
Torbjörn looked startled, but cleared his throat:  
-Onni, by any chance?  
-Yes. I was starting to wonder when one of you would figure it out. Okay, where did we put Tuuri's book? I'm going to ruin my own purpose if I stay in charge too long.  
Emil followed Lalli to his bag, out of which he picked up the book that Emil had seen earlier. When he spoke again, his tone was much more friendly.  
-I'm sorry about Onni. He usually shows up to protect us. But he's also a full-time mage, so you must have accidentally triggered him when you called his job a fancy title.  
Emil ruffled his hair:  
-I… guess I should apologize too. I didn't realize it was so important to you.  
-He wasn't lying about the fact that you were going to get to see a demonstration soon enough. It will probably be tomorrow, actually. You can be excused for not believing us until then.  
Torbjörn, Siv and Taru quickly ushered them out, starting to get worried about missing the night train. Emil got excited about the next day, even though he was almost entirely sure nothing special was going to actually happen.


	3. Company

**Chapter 2: Company**

For some reason, Lalli had insisted on being the last to board the train. Emil couldn't help asking why he had done so when he finally came in.  
-Just checking something.

They ended up bunking right next to each other, and Emil discovered the bed belts made both of them uncomfortable. As all the other passengers fell asleep, Emil tried to do the same, but didn't succeed at it. After an uncertain length of time, one of the guards noticed he wasn't sleeping, so Emil asked him about the noises that were coming from outside. The guard answered him that the sounds were perfectly normal and that he should try ignoring them. Soon after, he noticed Lalli shifting on his own bunk.  
-Can't sleep either, uh?  
-Night scout.  
-It didn't keep you from sleeping on the boat last night. Is it the noises? The guard just told me…  
-Heard the guard. Isn't the noises. Used to those.  
-What is it, then?  
-Spirits. Rash makes them go wrong. Mage thing.  
Emil had promised himself to go along with it to make up for what had happened earlier in the day.  
-Okay… But you should try to sleep a little so…  
Lalli's eyes suddenly widened:  
-Put your belt on!  
-What?  
Lalli was in the process of putting his own belt on:  
-Your belt! On! Now!  
Emil tried to put his belt on, but a sudden movement from the train literally threw him out of his bed. He landed on the floor, and just barely managed to start getting up before the train violently rocked again. One of the guards jumped over him while he was back on the floor, and Emil saw them open the door between their passenger compartment and the entrance. Emil followed him, and asked what was going on. He was told to buckle up in his bed, and his attempts to ask what was happening were dismissed. As he was about to go back to bed, the train swerved again and he fell into the entrance. He was going back into the passenger compartment after having been helped back up by one of the guards, when Lalli ran past him and stepped into the entrance:  
-A giant's arm is about to come through the ceiling!  
One of the guards, a female one, took notice of Lalli:  
-What?  
Emil was about to tell the guard that Lalli was a scout in hope of clearing up the situation when strange noises coming from the entrance's roof prompted the female guard to yell:  
-Breach! All guards to sector three!  
Emil noticed Lalli wasn't coming back into the passenger compartment, so he went to get him, grabbing his shoulders as soon as he was close enough:  
-What are you still doing here? We need to leave!  
Lalli looked slightly irritated:  
-I'll be fine! I can help them! _You_ need to leave. Now.  
As Emil was about to drag Lalli back into the passenger's compartment by force if he had to, when one of the guards positioned himself in such a way that there was now only a small space between the man's back and the wall. The sudden lack of space forced Emil's hold on Lalli's shoulders to turn into a hug.

Something came through the ceiling, the guards started shooting at it. Emil knew it was a giant's arm. Unfortunately, he quickly noticed that the thing's break-in had prompted someone to close the door to the passenger's compartment. He realized that trying to open it so they could go back in would put everyone behind it in danger. Siv, along with who knew how many other people in there, wasn't immune. There was only one thing they could do. Avoid attracting the thing's attention. Fortunately, Lalli seemed to have figured out this part before Emil had. In reality, he ended up having to move both of them a few times to avoid a fleshy tentacle going straight for them. They eventually entered the tunnel, which caused the arm to fall from the ceiling as if it had actually been glued there all along, and had just fallen due to its own weight. Lalli suddenly started struggling, but Emil wouldn't let him go. The guards were still looking for viable heads. He otherwise let himself relax, but realized that it had been too early to do so when a viable head approached him. Emil panicked and reflexively punched it.

All passengers were moved to the back compartment, except for Emill and Lalli, who returned to their own bunks. After putting his bed belt on and lying down, Emil started feeling strangely dazed and unable to move. He saw Lalli hover over him, then comb through his hair with his fingers, much like he had done to Lalli after his hair had been messed up by the decontamination in Mora. He then spoke to him:  
-You are okay.  
What was that supposed to mean? In the time it took the train to reach its destination, the daze had faded away, and he and Lalli had been able to change into their expedition uniforms. It had all been able to happen in silence, until Lalli but his sleeveless jacket on, but suddenly started staring at his hands instead of closing it:  
-Uh? We're already in uniform?  
-What are you talking about? You just changed into yours.  
-Oh, good morning Emil!  
It was only once the cheerful and friendly tone of voice was back that Emil realized it had been absent the whole night. A couple of exchanges later, Emil had found out that Tuuri and Onni "slept" during the night and hence didn't become active during that time of day.  
-Wait, that does this mean that…  
-Yes. You've been speaking with Lalli the whole night. Guess I should apologize for him as well. He's not as hostile as Onni, but he has absolutely no mind-to-mouth filter and his default perception of people in general is "minor annoyance". This is why I do almost all the talking that's not related to his scouting job.  
-Well, he wasn't outright mean to me or anything. He somehow knew that a giant arm was going to breach the entrance, so he went out to warn the guards. We got caught in the middle of the mess because I came to drag him back in, but they had to shut the door to protect the other passengers. Once we came back in, he straightened up my hair, said that I was okay, and let me settle down for the rest of the trip.  
Lalli's eyes grew wide:  
-What?  
-I swear I didn't mind about the hair. Guess it was a payback for what happened after decontamination back in Mora anyway.  
-I… think Lalli may actually like you a little. He hardly ever considers other people "okay". I was hoping he'd befriend someone on the expedition, but I expected it would take a few days before he even started warming up to anyone. Please excuse me for being surprised. Onni and I have been his only real company for a really long time…  
So he had not only been interacting with the "real" Lalli all this time, and had actually gotten on his good side. They were made to disembark from the train before Emil could think about what he had been told any further.

Emil and Lalli looked though the arrival office's windows at their new superiors while the verifications that would let them leave it were underway. Lalli, having never met Norwegians nor Danes before, asked Emil if he had. He was able to answer positively about Norwegians, who regularly came to help with land cleansing. The big blond man with sideburns was going to be the first Dane to which both of them had ever spoken.

They both made a beeline for the two people wearing uniforms similar to theirs the second they were allowed to leave the office. Neither he nor Lalli understood what Mikkel, their new Danish medic, was saying. Emil hoped he would start understanding him before he actually needed him. Lalli, at least, would be able to speak Icelandic to him. Sigrun, their new Norwegian captain, had called Lalli "her little mage" and said it was her first time working with a Finnish one. That reminded Emil of Lalli's promise of sorts that Emil would see magic before the end of the day. Once the introductions were finished, Taru gave Lalli a couple of shoulder bags and explained what they were in Finnish. They were then led to the place where their vehicle was parked. Emil asked Lalli about the bags on the way there.  
-Something that will make the magic later a little better.  
Last minute props, most likely. His fellow Finn was in on whatever it actually was.

Their vehicle was quite old, an Emil made his worst life choice so far by leaning on the wing mirror and breaking it. Fortunately for him, he managed to throw it far away before Torbjörn saw any of it and both witnesses, Sigrun and Lalli-with-Tuuri-in-charge, had gone for the same cover story: the mirror had been broken all along. He next helped everyone load their supplies into the tank. During the loading, he discovered a bruise on his face, and found out from Mikkel that it would have risked developing into cancer if he hadn't treated it.

Upon returning to the vehicle, Emil found Lalli in the dorm room, stuffing the hat he had been wearing upon his arrival in Sweden into one of the shoulder bags Taru had given him earlier. Lalli took both bags with him as he and Emil went to kneel on the office desk and stick their heads out of the window while the vehicle was heading out. They ran into their first snag almost as soon as the vehicle started. Sigrun, despite claiming otherwise in her files, turned out to not actually know how to drive. The only other person on the crew who was supposed to know how to drive was Lalli, more specifically the personality of his that was currently in charge. Emil assumed that this was good news, but Lalli let out a sigh:  
-I wanted to do this with less people who could see. But we need a driver.  
Lalli sat on the desk, took one of the shoulder bags, and placed it on his knees. Emil only noticed at that moment that the bag's flap had "Tuuri" written on it. It took Emil a few moments to realize that something was slowly materializing in front of the two of them. The more refined if became, the more it started to seem human. Eventually, a plump young round-faced woman, somewhat shorter than Emil, whose hair color and skin tone were identical to Lalli's, was standing in front of them, her eyes closed. She was wearing an outfit that had to be the skald version of the expedition's uniform, and one these breathing masks given to non-immunes around her neck. Her eyes opened, revealing a blue that greatly resembled Lalli's as well. She turned toward the diver's cabin, enabling Emil to notice that her hair was in a ponytail, and tied with a black leather cord with light blue beads at the knotted ends. She walked right into the drivers cabin:  
-Excuse me, but I think we should maybe switch.  
-Wait, who are…  
Sigrun was interrupted by Lalli:  
-Someone who knows how to drive.  
The young plump woman turned back in Lalli's direction and spoke to him in a scolding tone:  
-Lalli, you don't talk to your new captain like this.  
From where he was sitting, Emil could see Sigrun looking at the young woman, then looking at Lalli, then an enthusiastic smile appearing on her face as she leapt out of the seat:  
-This is awesome! Come take the driver's seat, short stuff.  
Sigrun moved, and the young woman took her place. The tank soon started moving again, this time going in the right general direction from what Emil could tell. As he was still startled by what he had just seen, Sigrun came into the office and faced Lalli:  
-So that thing Trond told me about you was true. But isn't there supposed to be another one of these?  
She pointed her thumb in the young woman's direction. Lalli answered by pointing towards the office's other door, and Emil somehow managed to gather the willpower to look in that direction. There was someone sitting on one the bunks, despite the fact that Emil knew that Mikkel was sitting on the passenger's seat in the diver's cabin. The man was far from being as large as Mikkel, but he was definitely larger than Lalli, and taller as well. He also looked a few years older, but otherwise had the same hair color and skin tone as Lalli. There was also something about him that Emil's brain registered as family resemblance to Lalli. As if he had been simply waiting to be noticed, he stood up and came into the office. He was wearing the same uniform cut as Mikkel and Sigrun, which seemed to be the standard one. He also had a breathing mask around his neck. He looked at Emil:  
-So, do you still want to make that bet?


	4. Family ties

**Chapter 3: Family ties**

The regular bumps on the bridge had caused Lalli's motion sickness to act up, eventually prompting him to literally curl up in a corner of the desk to fall asleep. Emil had considered carrying him to the dormitory, until he realized that the open window probably provided both much-needed fresh air and somewhere to throw up out of if even sleeping didn't keep his only meal of the day down. Despite Lalli being asleep, the two whatever-they-were were still there. Emil decided he should call them something, just to help organize the various thoughts he was having about them. He'd kept his thoughts on the subject of magic from wandering too much by remembering what he had once been told during training: there were various ways explosives could be used, but the one that mattered to cleansers was how to use them to destroy buildings. Knowing about any other application could eventually be useful is very specific situations, but thinking of them during a routine job with no particular complications was a distraction more than anything else. So he had decided to leave all the bigger implications of magic being real for later, and focus on the matter on hand. That didn't help much, as the matter on hand was mind-boggling in itself. There were, as far as he understood, two extra people than he had initially been told travelling with them. Which brought him back to how uncomfortable he felt mentally calling them "whatever-they-were". He had an idea. There were plenty of famous tales with couples in them, he could just nickname them after one of those couples… no, the shared skin tone, eye and hair colors, along with something he couldn't quite place about their faces, gave them more of a "sibling" feel to each other. Famous different-sex siblings, then. As he reflected on the few words each of them had pronounced before letting silence settle, the obvious answer came to him, and he slapped his own forehead for not having figured it out earlier. The names on the two bags that Lalli was currently using as pillows should have clued him in. Tuuri and Onni. It had to be them. Tuuri was the plump young woman currently driving. Onni was the man who had elected to use the flat portion of the radio's surface as a seat. Emil decided to make sure his theory was correct, as a precaution:  
-Onni?  
-Yes?  
Damn it. He didn't have anything to actually ask him, and admitting to have just figured out who he was would make him look stupid to anyone who already had. He then realized that Onni's position gave him the right angle to see something that he was wondering about.  
-Does Mikkel look alright? I haven't heard him since the two of you uh… appeared.  
Mikkel replied with that undecipherable mumbling, in which Emil vaguely recognized a possible request to be addressed directly.

Onni's eyes widened as he got off his seat on the radio with a small jump:  
-Tuuri, get us off that part of the bridge as fast as you can!  
Onni went into the tank's entrance room, and started chanting in Finnish. Emil heard sounds coming from outside, and poked his head out the window. He quickly noticed that the bridge was collapsing, and looking in the direction from which they were getting away, saw portions of the bridge that seemed stopped in time while in the middle of collapsing, only to continue their fall once the back of the vehicle was an extremely consistent distance away from them. They eventually reached a point where the lack of bridge collapse looked normal, rather than stopped by some external force. Emil next heard Onni's voice, speaking Swedish again, coming from the entrance:  
-We're past the fragile part!  
As Emil got his head back inside, he heard the distinctive sound of someone collapsing against a wall, then letting themselves slide down until their bottom reached the floor. Emil poked his head into the entrance:  
-Are you all right?  
-Just a little tired. I will be back on my feet in a few moments.  
Emil briefly looked at the sleeping Lalli, then addressed Onni again:  
-Is he tired because the two of you are… here?  
-Only to a very small extent, he's used to it by now. We started out as company, so it would make little sense to spend so much of his energy on us that he would be regularly sleeping when we manifest.  
It took returning to his seat on the desk to realize what he had just done: had he really just addressed some strange magical being as if it were a person? That was… he actually wasn't sure what could have been wrong in what he had just done. He didn't know how else he could address Onni anyway. And he had reacted to the sound of someone collapsing in the next room. Completely ignoring it wouldn't have been a good idea either.

They eventually had to stop in a tunnel at the end of the bridge, that Mikkel suggested using as a campsite until the next morning due to it being the last place where they would be completely safe. Emil swore that Mikkel started warming up to the idea of Lalli's unexpected companions when Onni approved the idea. However, Sigrun, who really wanted to camp outside the tunnel, pulled rank on him. So the gate to outside was opened, and, after a very brief interlude of climbing on top of the gate's overgrown frame to enjoy the view, the tank was driven out of it and parked in a patch of greenery. As sundown was approaching, Lalli was sent out to scout for a book-salvaging spot they could visit the next day. Just after he left the field of vision of anyone still inside the tank, Tuuri and Onni both told everyone one good night, yawned, and literally vanished. Sigrun spoke:  
-I have something to tell both of you before we go to bed. I knew it would be useless to do so before you actually met them.

Emil couldn't read Icelandic, but he could understand most of the little info that was on the identification cards that had been left in Sigrun's care by her "uncle". He could, for instance, guess that the words next to the only date on it were "date of birth". According to these, Tuuri was twenty-one, and Onni twenty-seven. He could also guess that their immunity was negative. Lalli's two companions apparently had a legal existence of sorts back in his military base, and officially had the same surname as him. Emil knew plenty of other questions should be gnawing at him, but that one was the most persistent:  
-I don't get it. Why make fake family members and have them not be immune?  
Sigrun let out a sigh:  
-So you don't know about that either. I'd better tell you now, so you don't accidentally bring it up at a wrong time. There really were people named Tuuri Hotakainen and Onni Hotakainen, a long time ago. They were Lalli's cousins, and not immune. They both died eleven years ago, on the same day. Reports from the people back in Finland say that they sometimes mention what they really are, but it's a bad idea to bring it up when they don't want to discuss it. Basically, avoid mentioning that the real ones are dead. Trond said that Taru recommended simply addressing them as if they were extra members of the crew. They don't actually need food, but this is the first time they are brought out into an area that would be risky for real, live, non-immunes. Fully functional breathing masks were included in the bags containing their uniforms as a precaution.

Emil wasn't sure how he managed to fall asleep after all that he had found out during the day. Especially with the new meaning of Tuuri mentioning that she and Onni had been Lalli's only company for long time, back when he understood her to simply be another personality. The next morning, they were woken up by the proximity alert and scratching on the door, only to discover that the latter was simply good as knocking as far as Lalli was concerned. Once decontaminated, he showed the various possible spots to Sigrun, who picked one. Tuuri was materialized to drive them there, while Lalli went to sleep under the one bunk that nobody was using. Sigrun had claimed the upper one, Emil one of the lower ones and Mikkel had slept on the floor due to being too big for any of them. Emil noticed something under Lalli's hand: wait, was that the pouch belt from which Mikkel had given him a cookie before breakfast? With the larger pouch open and cookies spilling out of it? Emil guessed he hadn't exactly obtained the item honestly, which was confirmed when Mikkel asked if anyone had seen his pouch belt loudly and clearly enough for him to understand. Emil pointed at Lalli's sleeping spot, and Mikkel had to wrestle the belt out of the hands of someone who was both sound asleep and much smaller than him. The thought that the guy who had proven to him that magic was real and was, from what he understood, three people at the same time, had stolen cookies from Mikkel, felt strangely… normal. Emil slapped his forehead again: why was he even thinking that all this somehow kept Lalli from wanting to steal cookies?

His thoughts were interrupted by Mikkel speaking in undecipherable mumbling again, then Sigrun answering "I think so." before addressing Emil in lowered voice:  
-Mikkel is wondering if you got to speak with Tuuri or Onni when you still thought they were just other personalities. He read what he could find about Lalli's condition before coming, and the books said something about the other personalities showing up to deal with things that the real person can't handle. He's wondering if this is going on in the present case as well.  
Emil mentioned the fact that Tuuri had been doing most of the talking and had said that Lalli didn't like dealing with people much, and also mentioned that Onni was protective of the two others. Mikkel mumbled again, and Sigrun "translated":  
-He says a protective other personality modeled after a much older relative makes sense for the condition as the book described it, but simply not liking other people is alone not enough to justify this happening. I kind of see what he means by that part, at least. People like that usually become skalds if they like books and night scouts if they don't. Oh.  
Even through that mumbling, Emil could tell that Mikkel shared his thoughts on the possibility that Sigrun may have hit the nail on the head. Then he realized it didn't quite make sense, either.  
-Okay, she's a skald, but she's still the one doing the talking. Maybe we could ask her.  
Emil briefly looked in Tuuri's direction.  
-Does your question dodge a certain subject at least?  
-Nah, don't worry. Hey, Tuuri did Lalli have any friends when you were kids?  
-No, he wasn't really fond of people even then. He usually kept to himself. But I had a bunch of them.  
Emil realized too late that any information provided by Tuuri may not actually be accurate. But it was better than nothing. And it sort of confirmed the thoughts he was having:  
-Maybe he doesn't like other people bad enough that he's really scared of talking to them.  
Mikkel's reply that it would do as an explanation for now was short and clear enough that Emil understood it.

Soon after, the tank entered the city and Tuuri asked if she should start driving slower to not get noticed, only to be told that the current pace was fine. Next thing Emil knew, Sigrun was asking Emil to wake Lalli up because he was coming with them for their first book salvaging mission.


	5. More company

**Chapter 4: More company**

Lalli put the "Tuuri" bag over his shoulder, just as Tuuri herself vanished. Sigrun raised an eyebrow:  
-What's up with that?  
Lalli answered in his friendlier tone of voice:  
-We're going to look for books in there, right? I might as well be in charge for that. Lalli will show up if we need to fight, don't worry about that.  
-You know, I'd kind of rather have our driver ready to get the tank away from here if there is a problem. Any way you can both do that and come with us?  
-I can't be doing the talking for Lalli and in my own body at the same time. That would be weird.  
Sigrun sighed:  
-Guess there is some limit to what you can do with these cousins of yours after all. But I'd rather have you in the driver's seat. We can always just grab a random set of books and have you sort them out later.  
-It's still a good idea to do a selection of what is brought back in the first place. And I can materialize right in the driver's seat if needed.  
-Fine, we'll try it your way.

Mikkel opened the communal area's door with a crowbar, and Sigrun went in to check the building. She came back out and said the building was okay. It was decided that Mikkel would stay outside to stand guard while the rest of them went inside. Mikkel took Emil's band-aid off, and admitted to having joked about the risk of developing face-cancer, and insisted it had been funny despite Emil's protests of the contrary. Lalli didn't seem to react much to it, until Onni materialized right next to Mikkel:  
-Extra guard and company.  
Emil was about ninety percent sure that was the tone of voice of Lalli himself. Emil went into the building, dragging Lalli behind him.

Once Emil and Lalli were out of sight, Mikkel noticed Onni was sniffling. His professional instincts briefly made him forget the exact nature of the being doing so.  
-Are you crying?  
-Allergies.  
-You are wearing a breathing mask. You would only have watering eyes if there were any allergens around.  
-I must be allergic to the mask, then.

After a couple of false starts that included an extremely scary room full of dead people, they finally found a place that contained books in relatively good shape. Emil and Sigrun carried Tuuri's selection from the room's bookcases outside, and Lalli followed them, holding a book that he had picked up from a desk. As Tuuri was making a selection for a second trip, Lalli suddenly turned his head in the direction of the air room's air vent, put the book he was holding down, and tapped his rifle's barrel.  
-Troll.  
Sigrun, convinced that it would be only a small easy to kill one, had them separate to search for it. The building turned out to be full of them. Sigrun found Emil again just in time to help him fight off a troll, and he set the building on fire as they were both leaving it. The sight of Onni's frowning face reminded him that Lalli was still in there.  
-Lalli! We have to go back in and…  
Why was someone holding his arm and keeping him from going back in? He heard a window break, and saw Lalli land into Mikkel's arms. He heard the tank's engine starting as Lalli jumped out of Mikkel's arms and ran past him, looking very displeased.  
-I'm sorry, okay? It won't happen again.  
Once he was back inside the tank, the daze from the train came back, along with a bout of nausea. He had to go to bed almost as soon as Mikkel cleaned him up and put him in a clean set of clothes.

Lalli had turned out to need an early bedtime along with Emil. "The cousins", as Sigrun now collectively called them, were still both walking around despite this. Tuuri was currently in the back of the tank with himself and Sigrun. The books they had brought on from the first trip were probably not the best selection possible from the library, but certain to be better than a selection by Emil and Sigrun alone would have been. The most interesting element remained a book that most likely arrived in the room after the Rash outbreak, rather than being among its original contents: a doctor's records about their patients.  
-I'll definitely need to take a closer look to this one tomorrow.  
Tuuri protested:  
-But that's my job!  
Up to the day before, Mikkel had been persuaded that the supposed skald of the crew would be more than happy to let him handle the books to get a little extra sleep. He would need time to get used to this. Sigrun quickly dealt with her:  
-Don't fuss, little fuzz-head! You can always let him have that one and look at the others. Not to mention we'll get both of you more books very soon.

They had fallen asleep with their hands almost touching. It was mostly due to Emil's arm reaching toward Lalli, but Lalli's own arms weren't as close to the rest of his body as they could have been. Onni had to admit that Emil had gotten on his bad side when he had said that mage was a fancy title. But he had more than made up for that in the last couple of days, despite setting a building on fire while Lalli was still inside. The face he had made when he realized what he had done and the first thing he had done after that could not be faked. From a military standpoint, it had been uselessly dangerous behavior. But Lalli had had plenty of people around him who wouldn't think twice if they had to choose between the greater good and saving his life. People who only cared for his well-being on a level that enabled him to do what was expected of him. What Lalli needed was someone who cared about his well-being enough that throwing common sense out the window for its sake was a real possibility. But the Keuruu authorities had quickly figured out that such a person in Lalli's life would be the first step towards Onni and Tuuri disappearing. Because of that, they had prevented anyone new from entering Lalli's life, on the off-chance that they end up becoming that person. Anyone new that had to be introduced into his life anyway had been made to follow a strict set of rules, and Lalli's own actual attitude towards people had made them unlikely for anyone to get sufficiently attached to him to break them. After this, nobody could blame Onni and Tuuri for assuming that it would take a long time for Lalli to form any kind of friendship once he got out of there. Emil had drawn Lalli out a handful of times without noticing it during the trip, for periods short enough that Tuuri was in charge again by the time the next conversation happened. Onni didn't expect Lalli to be drawn to someone like Emil, but he also didn't know what kind of person he would have actually expected Lalli to be drawn to; after all, he'd spent all these years being the one keeping genuinely harmful people out of Lalli's life, driving them away before any kind of bond had time to build. It was, however, still far too early to entirely trust Emil with Lalli, so he was still going to be around for some time. Some of these genuinely harmful people had noticed the complete lack of friends in Lalli's life, and had tried to take advantage of it. Onni heard Sigrun's voice from the other side of the wall:  
-You'll see. As long as we don't get hit by too many curve balls this'll be great!  
Curve balls. It was exactly what he was afraid of. Both for this expedition and this possible budding friendship. There was no doubt there would be some. Everyone else was human, after all. But he could still hope there wouldn't be too many.

The next morning, as Lalli was using magic to drive spirits out of the radio, Onni couldn't help thinking that he and Sigrun must have tempted the tricksters among both pantheons between them. The contents of the food crates had turned out to be candles, and this, combined with the fact that the four small coin pinchers still had no idea that they were still alive, had been enough to convince Lalli that they _really_ needed to get the radio working. Mikkel raised an eyebrow and briefly looked in Lalli's direction when the static vanished. Soon enough, he was in contact with an Øresund base operator, who went to fetch the small coin pinchers. Torbjörn was alternately happy to find out they were still alive, happy they had found books, disappointed that Emil had set the place on fire after only one trip, and panicked at the idea that they were already almost out of food due to a crate mix-up. The first solution offered had been to have them drive back over the bridge, only to have Sigrun inform them that the bridge was broken.  
-You… broke the bridge?  
Torbjörn sounded very worried. Onni had a vague idea of how this could be bad news for them. Letting them cross the bridge had been a favor from that Danish admiral, and their crossing ending up being what brought the extremely old structure to literal breaking point could result in them being asked to pay for it.  
-No? It was already broken when we go there.  
-It sure was.  
Tuuri seemed to realize too late that chiming in right after Sigrun may have not been the best idea. Torbjörn quickly caught on.  
-Uhh… who was that, just now?  
Sigrun didn't miss a beat:  
-It's Tuuri, of course. Taru and Trond must have told you about her.  
It took some time to convince Torbjörn of Tuuri's presence among the crew, during which Onni struggled very hard to not point out that they still needed to resolve the food issue. But he also knew that speaking would most likely just double the time that was getting lost over this. Fortunately, Trond turned out to not have been idle during the exchange, and came back explaining that he had convinced a friend who was the captain of an Icelandic ship to drop some food supplies at one of the decade-old Danish structures before the end of the day.

After Lalli helped Emil haul one of the food crates to the shore, Tuuri noticed something was not right with it the second she was back in charge. There was a living spirit in there. A human spirit.  
-Come back! Someone hid in one of the crates!  
Unfortunately, the boat hadn't been that close to them in the first place, and had started leaving as fast as it could while they were hauling the crates that they had delivered in life boats attached to harpoons by long ropes. Sigrun tapped Lalli's shoulder:  
-What did you just say?  
She might as well be the one opening the crate. Icelandic was the only language that person was certain to be speaking. It took a few moments to realize that it was a red-haired young man, right around Lalli and Emil's age:  
-Excuse me, is this Bornholm? he asked.  
-I'm sorry, but it is not.  
-Then where…  
He looked around, and figured out that he had smuggled himself to the wrong shore on his own. She barely managed to ask him his name and find out it was "Reynir" before Sigrun gave up on her own attempt to call the boat back with her own voice and decided that they were going to need the radio to figure out what to do with him. She charged Emil to bring the confused Reynir, who was in the middle of asking if the boat would come back, to the tank, calling him a prisoner in the process. Mikkel tried to say something to Emil in Danish, but the only word she caught of it herself was "prisoner". She came to walk alongside him as they were returning to the tank and talked to him in Icelandic:  
-Were you trying to tell Emil something?  
-To not treat this young man as a prisoner.  
She gave Emil the message in Swedish, but had a few other things to ask Mikkel:  
-What are we going to do with him?  
-I guess we'll be having a little company for the rest of the expedition.  
-What?  
-He most likely isn't immune. He just did something no right-minded person in such a situation would do, so there is no procedure to bring back possibly exposed civilians. Arranging for a quarantine ship to pick him up could take weeks, and they may not consider it's worth it since we are going to have our own arrangements anyway. I was trying to tell that to Sigrun just a little earlier, but I think she'll only really hear it if it comes from someone higher up in out chain of command.


	6. Ice sculpture

**Chapter 5: Ice sculpture**

Just half an hour ago, there had been so much agitation around the Icelander on both sides of the radio that Emil would have never guessed that he'd end up waiting for dinnertime sitting on his own bed, Lalli sleeping under it, sharing an awkward silence with Reynir. Lalli had overall done the right thing by giving the breathing mask from Onni's bag to Reynir. The use of having Tuuri in her own body had quickly become obvious, while Onni's specific talents would only be needed on select occasions. But that didn't mean Lalli had been happy about the gesture. Within five minutes of the words "we might as well give him the empty bed" being pronounced, Lalli's entire bedding had moved from under what was now Reynir's bunk to Emil's. Lalli had made sure it wouldn't be moved back by falling asleep in it and having everyone remember that he was supposed to head out that night. Sigrun was probably still mad at having to keep Reynir among them until the end of the expedition, but Emil knew she had settled down a little when she had finally noticed that Lalli had changed sleeping spaces and cracked a joke about him "moving in" with Emil. Tuuri was still in her own body, driving them back into the city, with just enough time before dark to reach the camping spot to which they were going to head before finding out about the food situation. Emil had considered going to talk with her, but he didn't feel like leaving Reynir alone in the room with Lalli. He felt the guy had already gotten on Lalli's bad side, and got the impression that Reynir could somehow end up making things worse if he left the room. Emil's thoughts drifted towards the fact that in a strange way, the Reynir was actually quite lucky. They carried a breathing mask they could give him despite the crew officially consisting only in immune people and _they actually had a bed for him_. If that bed had been occupied, they would have had to hope that there was enough spare floor space to squeeze an extra mattress between Lalli's and Mikkel's. They had the means of lodging and feeding him, in a technical matter. But Emil could perfectly understand Sigrun's distress on one simple matter: what in the world were they going to do with him?

Apparently, when Mikkel said "they" were going to give Lalli a bath, he actually meant that he was going spray water on Lalli's face from safe distance, while Emil was doing the rest of the actual washing. He actually didn't mind too much. And with Tuuri already at work in the office, he got to actually talk with Lalli. With the nature of the place he and Sigrun were about to visit, a certain subject inevitably came up.  
-I was too stupid for school. They kept me until I knew how to read, write and count a little because they had to, but after they told me to not come back.  
-What about Tuuri and Onni?  
Asking about them "when they were kids" rather than "when they were still alive" had turned out to be a great work-around. It was to the point that Sigrun had already shared a second piece of relevant information that her "uncle" had put in her care: in the first five years after the death of the real ones, Tuuri and Onni had been entirely in Lalli's head. He had only been good enough at magic to give them separate physical bodies for six years. The five-year period during which they had been more a sign of him losing his mind than anything else was in a complex situation: Lalli had ready-made answer for what both them had been doing during this period, but trying to poke holes into it was just as bad as directly alluding to the fact that his cousins were actually dead.  
-They did better. They tried to explain things to me in a way that I could understand. But only Tuuri liked it enough to stay after most people stopped.  
-What about magic? I don't know much about it, but it sounds like something that would be complicated to know how to use.  
-My grandmother taught me when I was little. I had to learn to do things she hadn't taught me when I joined the army. There are a few things I taught myself to do.  
Emil had an idea what some of these might have been. Sigrun said Icelandic mages called them "illusions". He realized that he was done with what Mikkel had asked him to do, so he handed Lalli a towel and went to put his own jacket, gloves and bandolier back on before putting a book bag over his shoulder while Lalli dried himself off and put on what had become his sleeping clothes. He offered Lalli a fist bump:  
-Alright then, I hope you don't feel left out. I'm sure we'll take you with us again some other time.  
Lalli completely ignored his fist and simply started walking in the tank's direction:  
-Tired, going to bed.  
-Okay, see you later.  
His honor was fortunately saved when Sigrun decided that fist-bump was meant for her, and then enthusiastically dragged him away in the Old World school's general direction.

After running into the mage, who had been wearing the look of someone who might murder anyone who kept him from going to bed on the spot, Reynir stood in the office's doorway, looking at the Glowing Girl. The big Dane had insisted that she wasn't glowing, and the mage had just gotten mad at him when he has asked him if she seemed to be glowing to him. He had no way of directly asking the two others, and he didn't feel like making someone interrupt their work to translate for him for such a small thing. The Norwegian woman and the Swedish man had just left anyway. He'd just have to figure out why she seemed to be glowing to his eyes himself. Trying not to stare at her for too long, he decided to take notice of what else was in the office. This is how he noticed there was a framed photo representing three ash-blond and light blue-eyed people. Two of them actually looked like the mage and the Glowing Girl. Except that she wasn't glowing on the photo. That could be part of the answer. He came into the office and pointed at the photo:  
-Excuse me, but what's that? I thought that you were supposed to be an illusion.  
-Some illusions can be photographed if they are good enough. One of the yearly tests we were put through was whether we could be photographed or not. They wanted an actual live human in the photo for comparison, so we ended up taking advantage of it to get free family portraits. This one is the latest.  
Reynir picked up the photo to have a better look:  
-So this is what Onni looks like. Sorry you had to…  
-Don't worry, he was perfectly fine with it.  
-Your… creator didn't seem too happy about it.  
-Lalli is my _cousin_. Nothing else. And there just happens to be certain types of changes in plans that he stands less than others.  
Reynir already knew he had been an enormous change in their plans. At least, she hadn't reminded him of that. Even his older siblings, who didn't exactly do danger-free jobs, had said that only people that didn't mind dying in the middle of nowhere would go on a hypothetical expedition into the Silent World. Now that he was among them, there were risks that they could no longer afford to take.

His thoughts were interrupted by the big Dane sending him back to bed, having guessed that he hadn't slept well the previous night. Reynir had to correct him about nightmares being responsible for it, as he had never dreamed in his life. The big Dane next explained to him that he probably dreamed, but simply never remembered it. He was still pondering the idea when he fell asleep.

It looked like a typical slightly cloudy night sky, except that it was actually black instead of having the blue hue the real one had. He was lying on something a little harder than the mattress on which he had fallen asleep. Upon sitting up, he realized that he was in a small boat padded with fur and fabric, that stood unmoving on an expanse of water that reflected the sky's dark color… or was the ground under it itself black? He couldn't tell. A noise coming from behind him startled him and made him fall into the water. There he discovered that while his braid had sunken as it would normally have, the rest of his body had only sunken down to about a centimeter or two below the water's surface. When he turned his head to see what had startled him, his first instinct had been to run away, his feet affecting the water's surface just enough to create small ripples. He eventually reached a place where his feet sunk into the water until they felt like they were meeting actual submerged soil, but ended up climbing a rock before the momentum of his escape subsided. The rock was right next to a short cliff, that he noticed when a dog standing on top of it came to lick his face. The dog looked like those from his home, and so did the sheep-filled grassy hills through which the river in the middle of which he was standing was flowing. Stupid. He should have never left home. He then noticed that the landscape suddenly stopped some distance away to change back into black water. The black water in that direction actually looked like a black river crossing with the normal one of the familiar landscape, with what seemed to be a forest on the other side. He noticed someone was lying down on the forest's floor, some distance from its border, their back to him.

Reynir left the grassy hills, crossed the black water and entered the forest, where his feet partly sunk into the ground. As he went further inside the forest, he realized the person was actually lying on a raft floating on a small pond. He also recognized him: it was the mage. Lúlli, if he had heard the Glowing Girl correctly. Once he was close enough to the pond's edge, he greeted him, waited for him to sit, and asked if he could come sit on the raft with him. Next thing he knew, water was splashing into his face:  
-Get out!  
The mage surrounded himself with a tangle of thin tree trunks, and used one of them to punch him. Reynir got the message. Just as unfriendly as he was in the real world, this one. He decided to leave.

As he left the forest with the sinking ground, he immediately entered a forest with a harder ground, without crossing any black water between the two. He looked around, and saw that it seemed to be on the edge of a lake. He noticed what seemed to be another person with their back to him, except that they were standing this time. From what he could tell, they were wearing a sort light brown fur cape with a red diamond on the upper back, a tunic of a darker and more yellowish brown and thigh-high leather boots of a similar shade. Reynir walked closer to them, but stepped on a twig before having the opportunity to greet them. The person turned in his direction, his familiar face showing caution, then surprise:  
-You! How… how did you get in here?  
-Uh… I just walked in. I thought I was leaving the forest in which Lúlli was because he told me to get out and punched me with a tree.  
Onni, as Reynir was quite sure it was him, let out a sigh of relief:  
-This still doesn't explain how you got inside _Lalli's_ area. Now, let's see… you're Icelandic… you're a mage. I think I remember something about Icelandic mages working differently… that would explain how you can go through our wards… I hope that's right, my memory isn't what it used to be.  
Reynir was confused:  
-Uh… what do you mean about me being a mage? And why do you look something like ten years younger than on the photo?


	7. Shattered illusion

**Chapter 6: Shattered illusion**

Onni raised an eyebrow:  
-How can you not know that you're a mage? Though it would explain why you just walked into our protected areas uninvited. For future reference, this is an extremely rude thing to do.  
Reynir heard Lalli's voice coming from behind him:  
-Tuuri overheard him telling Mikkel he doesn't dream. That would be how he doesn't know. It also means it's no use explaining him anything.  
Reynir turned his head to see that Lalli had indeed joined them. Onni was the next to speak:  
-That may have worked if he was still in Iceland. This is probably the reason it has so far, actually. But right now, he's in the Silent World, under your responsibility and very unlikely to be asleep at the same time as you. I know you don't like people Lalli, but you don't stand idle when they are uselessly risking their lives either.  
Reynir intervened:  
-I've been trying really, really hard to remember this dream. So maybe this time…  
-How do you know you didn't think of doing that before, only to have it not work? Onni replied. We would need a way of testing it once you're awake. You choose something Lalli, I may accidentally pick something you'll strongly disagree with.  
Lalli sighed, then seemed to ponder the situation a little before speaking again:  
-That picture you were looking at earlier. The frame has another photo in the back. Go look at it after you wake up. Tuuri will know I asked you to do this.  
Reynir had the sudden urge to close his eyes.

When he opened his eyes again, he was lying in his bed in the tank's dorm room. He got up, and walked to the office door just in time to see the Glowing Girl… no, Tuuri adding typed sheet of paper to a pile that Mikkel seemed to be reading. Tuuri noticed he was awake first, and asked if he had slept well. He felt he had, but hadn't quite finished waking up quite yet. His eyes landed on the picture frame, and he picked it up almost without thinking. He was about to put it back down and apologize for having picked it up without permission when he suddenly remembered that he actually _did_ have the permission. He had just flipped it over to open it when he heard a young man's voice calling Mikkel from outside. Mikkel shoved Reynir inside the driver's cabin with the frame still in his hand and told him to no leave until he told him to. Reynir decided he might as well sit on the passenger's bench and open the frame. There was indeed another photo in there: it showed Lalli, Tuuri and Onni as well, except that it was a full-body shot, the two former were still children and the latter… was a perfect match the man Reynir had seen in the dream.  
-Lalli didn't choose the task on a whim. He thought it may help you understand the answer to one of the questions you must be asking yourself.  
Since when was Tuuri sitting right next to him? Noticing it almost made him drop the frame on the floor. To avoid this happening again, he re-attached the back of the frame to the rest and put it down on the dashboard. He had plenty of questions, but he might as well start with getting the answer he was being offered.  
-So, what is there to explain about Onni?  
-You know about ghosts, right?  
-Yes.  
-Before I tell you any more, you'll have to promise to keep this a secret, and ask Lalli first if you feel someone else should really know. Lalli is afraid Icelanders may try something similar if they find out about the possibility.  
Reynir nodded.  
-Good. You saw the real Onni in the dream just now. Mages have a higher capacity to hold onto their old selves after death that most people. They still slowly lose their memories, but it's not as bad as for other people. Lalli was _really_ , _really_ not ready to deal with the world on his own, so Onni decided to stay until Lalli found at least one other person with whom he could be as comfortable as he had been with the rest of the family. Lalli's new guardian failed to be that person, so Onni's stay became longer than planned. Then he and Lalli jointly made a breakthrough by complete accident. A mage's potential to directly impact the physical world ends when their physical body dies. Between their death and reaching the afterlife, they can only act in the place you were visiting in the dream. At least, that was what people used to think. The Onni that Lalli re-created in his mind was close enough to the real one that it was able to channel his power into the physical world. The phenomenon amplified when he was able to give both of us illusion-based bodies. But the real Onni was going to depart as soon as Lalli became sufficiently attached to another human being, and staying mostly to make sure he didn't end up associating with the wrong kind of people. When the Keuruu authorities found this out, they decided that Lalli wasn't making any friends anytime soon, so they could make Onni stay as long as they wanted, and possibly reproduce the situation if one of the mages of Keuruu happened to die in the line of duty. When they got wind of that plan, the other mages got their mind set on not dying and protecting their colleague's lives as much as they could. All the efforts around Lalli mostly resulted in better security in the end, but the authorities weren't satisfied with just taking what they could get. When Lalli's old guardian offered him to be part of the expedition, they were talking about no longer letting Lalli leave Keuruu's walls, even for scouting, because they thought it would somehow make their goal closer. So all three of us agreed we'd rather go on the expedition than risk getting locked in.

This was a lot to take in. How could people do such a thing? He's heard stories of spirits unable to leave for the afterlife unless a certain purpose was fulfilled, but actively keeping a known purpose from being fulfilled seemed downright cruel to him. A question formed in his mind:  
-Why is Onni still here? Lalli seems to be getting along with Emil quite well.  
-Leaving will take time, after having been forcibly kept here for so long. There is also the fact that attempts to befriend Lalli have not been completely non-existent over the last few years. They just have always been from people with ulterior motives. We do want Lalli to make a friend, but that doesn't mean anyone will do. We've only known Emil for a few days, so one can't blame us for giving it a little more time before being sure.  
He'd think about the whole Onni situation later. He had something else to ask Tuuri:  
-Soo… can Lalli teach me how to do magic?  
-Unfortunately, he can't. You answer to different gods and do magic differently. I'm afraid you're on your own for this.  
Yet another question came to mind:  
-The real Tuuri…  
-She's actually gone, don't worry about her.

-I'm sorry, okay? You're too big for me to bury! I can't stay out here in the dark! Alone! I'll bury you tomorrow, I promise.  
After Emil had planted his knife in the dog beast's head, he thought he had seen Lalli leave to go back to the tank. Instead, he turned out to be waiting for him, just out of sight. He almost got startled when Lalli spoke to him on the way back inside:  
-You did well. Was it the first time?  
-Yes.  
Once they were inside, Lalli made a beeline for the kitten whose mother and siblings had just been buried outside. He picked the kitten up, wrapped it in the blanket that was covering it, and took it outside:  
-Hey! What are you doing? We're supposed to keep her warm.

Emil kept a few meters away from Lalli as he kneeled in front of the grave they had made for the dead cats, said a few words in Finnish, stayed there for a few moments, came back inside and put the cat back in its bed on the office desk. Mikkel silently changed the wet blanket for a dry one, while Lalli went to sit on one of the lower bunks.

Lalli was still sitting on the bunk when dinner was served. Emil handed him his bowl and sat next to him:  
-Do you mind if I ask why you took the cat out earlier?  
-I was explaining to her that her family was buried there and that we were going to have to leave tomorrow.  
-I see why you would have wanted to do that. But Mikkel insisted that we keep her warm. You may have…  
-She will be okay. I made sure before I took her out. It's important to show people the grave when their family is buried nearby and they are going to leave the place in the morning.  
-Well, it may be the case for people, but cats…  
Emil's mind clicked on what Lalli had just said. He suddenly got an idea of the reason why he could be thinking so strongly about showing the kitten where its mother and siblings were buried. He still didn't feel comfortable directly referring to the real Onni and Tuuri. He then remembered Lalli had other dead family members, so something just a little bit more vague than the question he really wanted to ask may do:  
-Were there some graves you never got to see?  
Lalli quasi-imperceptibly nodded.  
-And you are mad because some people could have shown them to you but didn't?  
Lalli nodded again.  
-Why didn't they show them to you?  
-They said I was too badly hurt. But I was well enough.  
-Maybe they weren't that sure of that and…  
-I was well enough.  
He went to finish his dinner in another room, then headed out to look for a new book salvaging spot early.

This day was becoming much too strenuous, and he couldn't stand to be around the others a second more. Way too many things he would have thought impossible just the day before had happened. He wasn't even sure why he had gone out of his way to show that kitten the grave. He didn't even like cats, and it was going to be just another useless waste of food once it was going to get better. The hardest was admitting that Emil had a point. These people had gone out of their way to bring him to safety and start nursing him back to health. If one of them had actually wanted to bring him out of their shelter to show him Onni and Tuuri's grave, the others would have disapproved of it, and ultimately convinced them to not do it. Keeping him alive had been their priority over everything else. Onni had given him his hat under the pretense that he needed it more. He happened to have the book on him because Tuuri had been trying to push him to learn Icelandic and recently reached a level that had made the book obsolete to her. He wasn't sure how he had ended up with her hair tie. It had just been among the belongings that had been given back to him once he had recovered. He was so preoccupied by his thoughts that it took him a while to remember that he was supposed to look for an easy to access book salvaging spot. He stopped running and looked around him, trying to figure out where he was. The position of the moon in the sky told him he had to find something fast to be able to come back by sunrise. He recognized where he was, and remembered there was a salvaging spot not far away. He went there, the road was clear. He started making his way back to camp, this time looking out for any obstacles that could come into the tank's way. Fortunately, there were none. He vaguely noticed the heavy rain from the previous day was in the process of turning into a heavy snowfall, but the spot would be reachable as long as it didn't become too bad.


	8. Nap

**Chapter 7: Nap**

-Why?  
Emil was pointing at the dog beast's corpse, out of which Lalli had had to extract the skull to put it up a tree. Lalli got out the daze in which performing the ceremony after a night of scouting with a lot on his mind had put him. He realized that Emil didn't understand what he was doing:  
-I'm sending the dog's spirit back to the skies. It's much better for it than just burying it.  
Emil sighed, and stayed silent for a while before sitting down and starting to eat his breakfast:  
-You'll explain me later, okay? Eat before it gets cold and we find out whether Mikkel actually melted candles in there or not the hard way.  
The both ate in silence, but having food in his stomach made Lalli realize just how tired he was and made him fall back into a daze. He barely registered Emil grabbing his shoulder, making him get up and walking him in the tank's direction. A blurry form that he guessed to be Mikkel came to meet him. Emil spoke:  
-I think he needs to go to bed.  
Mikkel mumbled something. He was probably speaking Danish, but Lalli was too tired to put any effort into deciphering it. As Mikkel and Emil were taking his outer gear off, he remembered that they would need Tuuri to go anywhere. Fortunately, she had already "woken up", so all he had to do was make her manifest. The fact that he couldn't stave of sleep any longer after doing so told him just how tired he was.

Sleeping all day would have probably been a good idea. Unfortunately, the weather had had other ideas. The snowfall was much higher than what he had expected, to the point that he would have probably under-estimated it even if he hadn't been distracted by his thoughts during the night. It was still his fault, and he would have to fix it. So, he woke up, but his just recently washed gear back on, and went to look for a new camping site. After running into several dead ends, he found a tunnel full of troll pods. He summoned his own luonto to get rid of them. He would have previously used Onni's for such a thing, but he now wanted to avoid using it as much as he could. He'd had to do so quite a few times in the last six years.

About a dozen of other scouts, most of them among those that were going to have to attend that lecture about proper report filling, had cornered him against a wall.  
-We know it was you, Lalli!  
 _He_ knew it was him. That it was _his_ incorrectly filled out report that had caused that group to be ambushed and four of the to die. He felt bad enough about it as it was. The least he could do was own up to it himself instead of having Tuuri do it for him:  
-I'm sorry it happened. I'll go to the lecture like everyone else. Now leave me alone.  
One member of the group placed himself right in front of Lalli:  
-Oh no, we are not leaving you alone. Quite the opposite, actually. From now on, you will always have at least one of us watching you. Everyone knows you actually don't care about other people, and that you're here only because you used to be the ward of someone who used to work here. We are going to show you that making mistakes that causes people to die has consequences. I'll be taking the first round.  
-I was about to go to bed.  
-I will be making sure you are actually sleeping, in that case.

Once back in his room, Lalli took off his gloves, boots and fur cloak. The other scout was looking at the framed photo that was on the counter, most likely because there was literally nothing else interesting to look at in the room, aside from the location of his blankets and pillow.  
-Who are these?  
-My cousins.  
-My sister died in that attack.  
-I already said I was sorry.  
Lalli slid under the bed, rolled into the covers and fell asleep.

The horrible smell refused to leave his nostrils, his eyes stung so much he didn't dare open them in fear of making it worse and he felt like he was coughing non-stop. The presence of Onni's physical manifestation, that he'd had to summon in plain sight of other people for the first time, was the only thing making all of it bearable.  
-It was just supposed to be a prank. So he would learn his lesson.  
-I can understand using a stink bomb. I can understand not knowing about his strong sense of smell. Still going with the plan after finding out he sleeps on the floor can be explained by poor judgement. Blocking his door after leaving cannot be excused. If he hadn't been secretly working on solid illusions all this time, things could have really gone bad. You're lucky he'll be better after a few days of rest.

Lalli had kept his promise to attend that lecture, by sending Tuuri's physical manifestation there. Some things had led to others, until Tuuri and Onni were considered part of the skalds and mages respectively, and Lalli had gotten himself tangled in that deal with the higher-ups. The stink bomb incident had made it very easy to keep his part in not making friends. The incident had also motivated him to avoid doing anything that would make him lose his own luonto, as he was afraid of what could happen is he stayed asleep for too long at a time. He knew he would be safe from such "pranks" with the expedition crew, at least.

The place on the other side of the troll pod filled tunnel seemed to be a fort of sorts. There were strange spirits in one of the rooms, but they didn't look particularly harmful. This place would do, and he didn't have the energy to look for another one anyway. So, he had Tuuri drive the other through the tunnel and park the tank while he was waiting for them, and wiping the blood from his nose and eye. When they got there, he was vaguely aware or Emil coming out of the tank, taking his coat off and wrapping it around him. Tuuri asked both Sigrun and Mikkel if she was going to be needed for anything soon. When both said "no", Lalli dismissed her, before falling back asleep. They would probably be fine without both of them for a couple of days.

Things had somehow managed to go south within an hour of Lalli falling asleep and Tuuri vanishing. Reynir had thought he had seen a troll in one of the rooms in the surrounding building. Sigrun and Mikkel had gone into the room to check it, and had brought Reynir into it to show him that there was nothing. There had turned out to be a troll and the campsite after all, just not in that specific room. Sigrun had had to let it bite her arm to avoid Reynir getting bitten instead. The Icelander had escaped the ordeal with simply a small bruise from the troll, while Emil had gotten his leg injured while hunting it down along with Mikkel and Sigrun. By the time the troll had been taken care of, it had been close enough to meal time that Mikkel had treated Emil's leg while dinner was cooking.

Dinner itself was quite calm, but Emil couldn't help being worried by the fact that they hadn't been able to wake up Lalli to eat. Mikkel had said that he was probably sleep-deprived and just really needed to rest that badly. In such circumstances, it was best to wait for him to wake up on his own. But Emil had the gut feeling that Tuuri's absence wasn't normal. The fact that he had caught Reynir looking at Lalli with a worried face a couple of times during dinner didn't help things.

-Uh… Sigrun? What did Reynir see in that room, if it wasn't a troll?  
-He claimed it was ghosts.  
-Do ghosts actually exist?  
-Yes. But mages are the only ones actually able to see them. According to Mikkel, Reynir reported them as not looking mean. He must have fallen for a trick of the light or something. By the way, I like your reaction better than Mikkel's. He insisted that magic being real didn't necessarily mean ghosts were, and that Lalli and I would have to give him separate proof of their existence.  
-Is it… possible that Reynir is a mage?  
Sigrun bent over laughing for a solid couple minutes before answering Emil:  
-Looks like you are erring on the other side of things. It's basically impossible for several reasons. First of all, mages are chosen by the gods. I know you don't think gods are real, but do you imagine anybody giving an important task to someone stupid enough to end up among us the way he did? For the gods, making someone a mage is like giving them the promotion of their life.  
He thought of it, and, after a little thinking, understood what she meant quite well.  
-Another reason why it's pretty much impossible is that people usually know quite fast when they are chosen as mages. And finally, they usually choose people before they reach adulthood. The kid is technically a year older than you are according to Mikkel, and was still working as a sheepherder when he started the trip that made him end up in that crate. So, unless he was chosen a long time ago and has yet to figure it out for some reason, he's definitely not a mage. The only mage thing he could eventually have is seeing into the future. He _was_ spot-on about that troll being here. But even that kind of thing usually happens when they are dreaming.  
At least, Emil now knew what to look for in case he started wondering about Reynir again.

During the night, Emil was woken up by something hitting the top of his head. He reflexively sat up, but the lack of any apparent activity for a few moments of baffled him even more.  
-What was that? he wondered.  
Only then did he hear shuffling from the other lower bunk and the sound or Reynir's voice saying something in Icelandic. Given the tone of voice, he assumed it was some kind of apology. He seemed to fall back asleep soon after. Since he was awake he might as well check on Lalli. He felt him still under the bed, and having no reaction to his touch.  
-You were really that tired, weren't you? See you in the morning, I hope.

It was only the four of them at breakfast the next morning. Emil's leg was still hurting, Sigrun was focused on eating her breakfast while only really being able to move one arm and Reynir was staring in the direction of the room in which the troll had died. Sigrun was the one who broke the silence:  
-Hey, Mikkel, what was with the box you took with you on the way back to the tank?  
Emil briefly wondered what she was talking about, then remembered that Mikkel had indeed taken something from the room at which Reynir was currently staring at back with him. Emil managed to make out most of what Mikkel said this time:  
-This was very obviously a place in which Rash patients were being treated. The note suggests that their caretakers were expecting them to recover. The contents of the box look like they could have been medicine.  
-Happy to know you'll have something to keep you busy for the day while Emil and I check out that book scavenging spot we didn't get to go to yesterday.  
Emil felt he'd be busy enough having to look after Reynir… and Lalli.  
-Hey, is it normal that Lalli is still sleeping?  
Mikkel reassured him:  
-Do not worry. He will most likely wake up while you are away.  
Sigrun chimed in:  
-I just remembered something. Try contacting the old folks today. If they didn't answer when we called yesterday, they may be back at headquarters during the day.  
-I have already thought of this myself, thank you very much.  
The breakfast conversation had led Emil to assume it would be relatively straightforward day. It would turn out to be everything but one.


	9. Ghosts

**Chapter 8: Ghosts**

Reynir scribbled the note on a piece of paper:  
-Okay, I wrote it down. Was there anything else?  
-Yes, I would like to know why you are answering the radio and not Tuuri.  
-She kind of disappeared after she drove us to the campsite yesterday and hasn't reappeared since then. Mikkel said there is nothing wrong with Lalli and that he probably just needs to rest. But he's been sleeping since yesterday and already missed a couple of meals because none of us could wake him up.  
-Taru mentioned this could happen. But Mikkel was accidentally right about one thing. All that can be done about Lalli is keeping him as comfortable as possible and waiting for him to wake up. Unless you happen to be a mage yourself, your guess as to when it will happen will be no better than Mikkel's was.  
Nobody had bothered to be clear about who at headquarters believed in magic or not around Reynir. Trond's latest words had just confirmed he was one of those who did. It was worth trying:  
-I guess I could try asking him myself, but last time I went in his area, he told me to get out and punched me with a tree.  
-What?  
That got enough of the old man's attention for Reynir to explain what he could with his own words, as briefly as he could, while carefully avoiding any mention of Onni.  
-This is… unexpected, to say the least. What the Icelanders would consider proper training will be impossible until you come back. But my country's mages were perfectly fine without that school before contact was reestablished, and the first mages from our era were able to figure things out without teachers. Why don't you try that? It will keep you occupied, if nothing else.  
-Uh… thank you very much mister…  
-Andersen.  
-Mister Andersen. Hey, is Mikkel going to get in trouble for leaving like this?  
-No. Just ask him to call as soon as he comes back.  
Reynir let out a sigh of relief. Less than a minute later, he heard Sigrun's voice from outside:  
-Mikkel!  
I was followed by Norwegian words he couldn't understand. Trond spoke:  
- _Now_ he's going to get in trouble.

The first thing Emil noticed upon entering the tank was that Lalli was still asleep. The second thing he noticed was that Reynir was sitting at the radio, his mask on. The third was that Mikkel was nowhere to be found. The fact that they had to rely on that old man Sigrun called "uncle" as a translator to figure out what was going on alone told Emil about the amount of trouble in which Mikkel was going to be in when he came back. Sigrun was so furious that she completely ignored a few attempts from Trond to tell her something he had apparently just found out while talking with Reynir. Sigrun kept insisting that it couldn't be as important as Mikkel's current lack of presence, while, from what Emil could tell, Trond was trying to tell her that it was actually quite important. However, it ultimately seemed to be non-essential enough that Trond just plain ended up giving up on telling her about it. During the conversation between Sigrun and her "uncle", Reynir had timidly backed away into the driver's cabin, and shut the door once he was inside it. Emil thought he had the right idea, but couldn't imitate him due to being on the wrong side of the radio room. When he went with leaving the tank the same way he had come in, saw a familiar large silhouette approaching. He really hoped there was a rule of survival for angry Norwegian captains, because Mikkel was going to need it.

From what Emil could tell, Mikkel had found something very interesting during his unauthorized trip, and the others were now seriously considering altering their initially planned course for a new one. Emil's current worry was that Lalli was still asleep, despite the fact that Mikkel had more or less promised he would be awake by the time Emil and Sigrun would be back. With no idea of what else to do, he found Lalli's rifle, unloaded it, placed it next to his mattress and put his hand on it. He remembered Tuuri touching it while she was in charge in the communal space, and Lalli's true self showing up right after. Maybe it would help bring him back in the present case as well.

Dinnertime came soon after the discussion ended with the decision to alter their course. Sigrun and Mikkel sat in the office for their meal, while Emil and Reynir were sitting on their respective bunks. The meal was going peacefully until Reynir froze in the middle of bringing his spoon to his mouth for a few beats, put his food on the floor and started squinting in the general direction of the tank's front. He got up and walked to the office door, where he was stopped by Sigrun:  
-Sorry kid, but you've already spent plenty of time in here today and you have no business being in the driver's cabin that I know of.  
Reynir seemed to get the general message, went back to the room, sat in the corner where the two lower bunks met without bothering to take his boots off, and seemed to fall asleep. Sigrun asked the question that was going through Emil's mind:  
-What was that about?  
Emil suddenly realized that Lalli was choking, and kneeled down next to him:  
-See? He's choking! Would someone who knows what to do get over here?  
He had barely finished his sentence when Lalli started screaming in a high-pitched sound. Sigrun did the least helpful thing possible as far as Emil was concerned:  
-Hey! Shake the guy awake! We can't have him blasting a siren like that!  
-I'm trying! He won't wake up!  
-Well, try harder!  
Sigrun and Mikkel both suddenly collapsed on the office floor, while the kitten, who happened to be the office as well, started meowing in a high-pitched sound not unlike the one currently coming out of Lalli. Emil looked around and realized that he was the only conscious human being in the tank. Why hadn't he collapsed like the three others yet?

Suddenly, he heard the tank start. Emil would have liked to move to see if there was someone in the driver's seat, but Lalli had grabbed a clump of his hair and one of his arms, and refused to let go. He had a brief flash of comprehension, as he noticed that Reynir wasn't that far away from him at all:  
-I'm going to collapse too if I go anywhere else, aren't I?  
That theory was immediately contradicted by Reynir starting to move again, getting up and going into the entrance. Once there, he put his arms in a position similar to that taken by people put under arrest. He then started chanting. It took Emil a few moments to realize that it was not Icelandic, but Finnish. He also recognized the chant's rhythm, if not the words. He had heard such a rhythm before, when Onni had been using magic to prevent the bridge from collapsing. Little after the chant was done, Lalli stopped screaming and let go of Emil's hair and arm. Emil looked down and saw his expression was peaceful again. He heard noise coming from the office, but none of it was the kitten meowing. He looked in the room's direction to see that Sigrun and Mikkel were in the middle of getting back up on their feet. Sigrun was the first of them to speak:  
-Wait, why are we moving? Is Tuuri back?  
Emil saw Sigrun look into the driver's cabin:  
-Uh?  
Emil heard Tuuri's voice, seeming to come from the driver's cabin:  
-Sorry if I'm scaring all of you, but being visible and being able to hold objects are technically two different things, and I'm only able to do one of them right now. The old campsite was overrun by ghosts, but Lalli became able to make me manifest again only right after they came close enough to hurt you. I need to get everyone to a new campsite out of town.  
Sigrun answered:  
-Do it, then.  
Emil looked for Mikkel, and noticed him kneeling next to one of the corners of the entrance that was in his blind spot, speaking Icelandic. He helped Reynir get up, then walked him to his bed. Mikkel noticed Emil's presence:  
-It seems like that whatever made us collapse is still affecting him. He needs to lie down.  
-Wait, you have it backwards. He the only one still able to walk around until right before the two of you woke up.  
-Do you mean you were conscious during all that time?  
The tank stopped, and Emil heard Tuuri speak again:  
-Excuse me, but I think some of you may need to go out and clear the way.

Clearing the way for the tank had required fighting a few trolls, and they were currently out-walking a water beast that had almost drowned Sigrun and prompted both her and Mikkel to ask Tuuri to put as much space between the tank and the city as she could manage. All three of them were surprised to find the tank not that far away from where the fight had happened. A voice came from the driver's cabin, despite the fact that there was apparently nobody in there:  
-Sorry. Lalli was going to need to take a short break before we left the city anyway, so he decided he might as well take it where we would be away from the fight, but easy to find.

Sigrun had quickly fallen asleep once her wounds had been re-stitched. Reynir was sleeping as well, but seemed to be whimpering in pain despite the painkiller Mikkel had given him. Emil knew what he had seen and heard. He was _really_ going to need to talk with Sigrun. Before disappearing for the night, Tuuri had all but admitted that Lalli's current state was due to magic overuse that had been necessary to clear the way to the campsite they had left just a little earlier. She had also said that Lalli was recovering on his own, and would be up and about before the end of the next day for sure. An extremely disturbing thought crossed Emil's mind: if the person telling them so hadn't been an obvious creation of magic herself, both Mikkel and himself would have probably refused to believe that Lalli's current state had anything to do with magic. Lalli, and Reynir as far as he was currently concerned, probably weren't the first mages to be treated by someone who didn't believe in magic because there was nobody else available. How many times had it led to mistakes similar to those made by Mikkel earlier in the day, in much more urgent circumstances? He decided he would ask Lalli what to pay attention to once he would be awake, so he would know what to point out to Mikkel if such a thing happened again.

The idea had been crazy, but it had worked, and not killed Reynir in the process. It also made Onni extremely grateful that they had left Keuruu before discovering this was possible. He and Lalli now knew that strictly speaking, only his fake self was necessary to channel his magic into the real world. The human component of the process was flexible, and didn't even have to be a Finnish mage. In theory, Lalli could have probably used who he wanted if he had had to, but Reynir had been the only one of them able to give permission, and making it look like it only worked on mages was the best they could do to cover up the method's true potential. Why was it that things that both made him want to stay a little longer and reminded him how important it was for him to leave as soon as possible kept happening?


	10. Wounds

**Chapter 9: Wounds**

Much like the previous evening before he'd gone to bed, Reynir felt like he had pins and needles in his entire body. The only reason he was fighting his current impulse to go back to sleep was that Tuuri, who had reappeared just a little earlier despite Lalli still being asleep, was feeding him his lunch. At least, his stomach wasn't rebelling in addition to this. If Tuuri's hands were occupied with feeding him, her voice was entirely occupied with explaining something to Sigrun, Emil and Mikkel in Swedish. From what Reynir could tell, their responses to what Tuuri was telling them were evenly split between bewilderment, asking questions back and more neutral reactions. At some point, the feeding seemed to be done, and Tuuri made him lie back down:  
-I was explaining them why you are not feeling well, so you won't have to. You need to rest.  
He slid right back into the covers and was soon asleep.

Almost as soon as he had woken up, Lalli had been given food. Contact was made with headquarters as he was finishing the meal. Since Lalli was going to be awake for the rest of the day anyway, it was decided to start the first leg of travel to a destination that had been chosen while he was asleep by having him lead the way after looking at the maps. A conversation with her "uncle" finally completely convinced Sigrun that Reynir was a mage, something that Tuuri hadn't quite managed to do. As he was about to head outside, Lalli saw Mikkel tending to a large number of gashes on Sigrun's left arm. He asked Emil what had happened, and almost regretted doing so. He had noticed the stiches on Reynir's sleeve through Tuuri's eyes, but had dismissed them as him having probably gotten his sleeve snagged somewhere. That had been close. Too close. And Sigrun's arm had gotten badly injured in the process. It was happening again. He was going to need some time alone to deal with the thoughts that were emerging in his mind. But he also needed to get crew as far away from those ghosts as he could.

Lalli finally got the resting time alone that he needed while Mikkel was preparing dinner. Once it was done, Emil came to Lalli with his bowl, then stayed by his side and started talking.  
-Could you please stop talking or leave?  
-Only if you tell me why you seem in such a bad mood. I was trying to cheer you up.  
If Emil was supposed to become the person with whom he could share this kind of thing. Might as well find out how well this worked out now. He told him that troll had attacked Reynir and hurt Sigrun because he had missed it. Emil went silent for a while before answering:  
-You were tired. You missed only one. I know it attacked Reynir but… it was still only one.  
-Reynir could have been scratched.  
-He wasn't.  
-Sigrun is hurt.  
-Don't worry. She keeps saying it's not bothering her too much.  
Unfortunately Lalli knew all too well what such claims could actually mean. Stupid Onni. It hadn't even been a troll. Just a plain old animal that could have become dinner if they hadn't been so tired. His arm and mouth almost moved on their own:  
-Go away.  
Emil had dropped his own bowl when Lalli's had hit him. What had he done? He hadn't meant to do that. Onni had been the one to lie about how badly he was hurt. Emil had nothing to do with it. And there was no way he could guess, unlike when he had complained after showing the kitten its family's grave. Had he just ruined everything?

The next morning, Lalli waited for the food to be ready away from everyone else, came to pick up his bowl when it smelled ready and ate as far away as he could from everyone else while still being able to alert them to any danger approaching from his side. He wasn't going to be able to face Sigrun and Reynir for a while, Emil was probably not going to be his friend after all and he loathed Mikkel's sense of humor, so he might as well eat alone for the rest of the mission, and only have Tuuri's physical manifestation interact with the others. Because of this, he actually welcomed the fact that he now needed to take a day scout's shift one day out of two and catch up on the missed sleep on the days he did not. Reynir was fortunately getting better, but both he and Lalli had discovered that whichever healing process he was undergoing happened much faster if Reynir was in Lalli or Onni's area rather than his own. Since this resulted in them frequently sleeping at the same time, Lalli had decided to try befriending him instead in hope of enabling Onni to leave. That idea turned out to be the worse he had ever had. Not only did Reynir keep rubbing him the wrong way despite the fact that his approach to human interaction really wasn't that different from Emil's, but Lalli could tell Onni was starting to like him. The point was to sever Onni's connections to the world of the living, _not_ to create new ones. Because of this, Reynir was told to no longer enter Lalli or Onni's space unless he really needed to as soon as he has recovered enough to no longer be bedridden.

Near the end of the first week of travel, as he was looking towards the rest of the crew due to hearing an unusual noise coming from their direction while Tuuri was inside the tank, he noticed something odd. Why was Emil sitting mid-way between him and the others? He was tempted to ask via Tuuri later, but finally decided it was best to leave her out of this. During the following meal, Emil was a little closer to Lalli, and a little closer again during the meal after that. Lalli figured out Emil was trying to do, and decided to let him.

When Emil reached the point where he was now sitting right next to him, Lalli was in the mood to talk to him again. He somehow fond the strength to explain that Onni had once downplayed the seriousness of a wound he had received, even though he didn't get around outright admitting _when_ it had happened. Sigrun's wound was being treated, at least. The chances that things would end _that_ badly were currently low, especially compared to the circumstances in which Onni had gotten hurt. Emil understood what had happened a few days ago, and they exchanged a few apologies before finally agreeing that they had both done something they hadn't meant to. This time, Emil made sure Lalli didn't mind talking before starting a new conversation.

-Hey, Onni, there is that strange place that appeared over there. It looks a lot like the place I dreamed about a couple weeks ago. I went inside and it felt kind of familiar. I came here to make sure, but now I know it feels a lot like your place. I think there's another dead mage in there. Can you please come with me? My dog doesn't want to, Lalli is awake and I don't want to go alone.  
Onni sighed, both because he was actually curious and he would have probably gone there for the sake of Reynir's security even if he had not wanted to. He was, however, going to talk with Reynir and make sure they both had the same definition of necessity once they would be done with this.

Onni didn't know whether the woman was a mage or not, but she was definitely a ghost who had managed to hold onto most of her old self for eight times as long as he had, and claimed her job was to help souls find the afterlife. This was enough to make her potential help for Lalli and Reynir's ghost problem, provided one of them could find her in real world. It was sadly a long shot, as he was literally the only magical extension of Lalli's mind that didn't systematically transmit information to him, and Reynir had absolutely no say in the expedition's route. All Reynir would really be able to do would be to keep his eyes peeled for the place, in case it just happened to be on the route they were following anyway. The old lady insisted on knowing what was keeping Onni, since she had explained her own reasons.

Both Onni and the Old Lady seemed to have forgotten he was present. After being told about Lalli's situation, Reynir had known he was unlikely that he would find out the specifics about how Onni and Tuuri had died, and honestly hadn't wanted to know anyway. Now he knew. But he could also tell Onni probably really needed this conversation, so he didn't dare leave before the other mage was ready.

Once they were back in Onni's place, Reynir couldn't help asking:  
-Onni, do I risk keeping you from going? Is this why Lalli kicked me out once I got better?  
-I won't lie to you and claim it's not a factor. But it's for your own good as well. It would be cruel to let you get attached to me only to have me leave.  
-How are you different from everyone else on the crew, exactly? Lalli is trying to rely less on Tuuri as well, if I understood correctly. Any one of the others could get mortally wounded by a troll tomorrow for all I know. And even if we manage to make it back home, I probably won't be seeing any of them for a very long time once we part. But in the meantime, we only have each other to interact with. So I don't mind becoming friends with you only to see you go. But I do mind a little if it ends up being the only thing keeping you here.  
Reynir's word brought Onni to a realization. Even though he wanted to leave, it may impractical to do so while they were still on the expedition and the crew could use every bit of help it could get. Most of the factors keeping him bond to his world were out of his control, and leaving too early was one of the last things he wanted to do. Maybe he did need this. One bound on which he had some control, and that he could sever when the time would be right. But he also knew he could not let Reynir know this.  
-Don't worry, you're not keeping me for going. No offense, you're not a bad person, but I don't exactly consider you a friend either. I'll just remind you that crossing that sea too often is dangerous, so you still need to avoid coming to see Lalli or myself for no good reason, even if we are right next to you.

Lalli had scouted the way to the hospital that they had been trying to reach for the past two weeks the previous night. By the time he came back, the others had finished with their breakfast and Mikkel had set a few cookies aside for him. He'd eat later, after reporting to Sigrun, so he didn't have both that _and_ the approaching ghosts on his mind. Good news, Sigrun asked him to go to bed almost as soon as his report was finished. Bad news, it was because she wanted him to come explore the hospital with her. She also mentioned that he would get to rest as much as he wanted once they left the hospital.


	11. Let go

**Chapter 10: Let go**

-Enjoy the visit, kiddo. The real you would have been made to stay behind with Emil and the civvie.  
These were the last words Emil heard Sigrun say before she, Lalli with Tuuri in charge and Mikkel disappeared inside the building. He looked at Reynir, who was seeing them off through the office window. If it weren't for him, Emil could have gone in there with them. But Sigrun had needed Lalli's eyes and Mikkel's knowledge on medical matters, which made Emil the one she could afford to leave behind. However, each time he considered what else would have been different if Reynir hadn't been there, his mind came back to Tuuri's explanations, and reminded him that the Icelander's presence had already saved them all once. This was certainly more important than being able to visit an abandoned hospital. He spent more time watching Reynir than actually interacting with him as it was, so this was no different from the usual. The day before had been a record breaker in terms of actual interaction between them, as he'd had to get Reynir moving out of the antique shop within a day of receiving a small piece of paper with a rune drawn on it from him. On the matter of that paper rune, he found nothing better to do than to pull it out of his pocket and show Reynir he still had it. After he noticed, Emil didn't know what else to do. Reynir eventually went inside, likely having figured out a way to keep himself busy. Emil heard a meowing sound from a close place, and noticed that Kitty had come to keep him company. The kitten was now effectively a member of the crew, and everyone was calling her their own language's equivalent to "Kitty". Things were still fuzzy as to what would become of her once the mission would be over, in part because there were so many possibilities. The decision on who would keep her would only be needed if they were able to bring her back to the Known World, and they would need to survive the mission to find out if they could take her there. Their current worry in that chain of decisions, as it was with many others that hadn't been settled before the mission had started, was hence to stay alive until the time came to make the next one. Mikkel had also pointed out that being authorized to bring her into the Known World would not necessarily mean that any of them would get to keep her, and some of the possible fates he had mentioned made it sound like Kitty could actually be better off left behind. In the meantime, the benefits of having even a Grade C kitten around were worth the efforts involved in keeping her fed, especially considering that caring for her kept the other unplanned addition to the group occupied. Emil still secretly considered her his, as they wouldn't have her if he hadn't taken her out of the hideout in which she had been almost drowned. He really hoped the others would remember this if any of them keeping her ended up being an option.

Emil was starting to yawn out of boredom when smoke started coming out of the pocket in which he had left the rune. As soon as he realized the contents were on fire, he acted quickly to put it out. Just a few seconds later, Sigrun, Mikkel and Lalli came pouring out of the building and told him to get inside the tank. Tuuri manifested in the driver's seat and got the engine started. Meanwhile, both Lalli and Reynir looked like it would be a bad time to disturb either of them.

-Tuuri would have liked this…  
Those were the only words Emil got out of Lalli before he fell asleep in his arms. Lalli had been given his dinner first, and Emil got his own almost as soon as he put Lalli in his usual sleeping spot. Headquarters were called during dinner. Mikkel alternated between Icelandic and Danish to make sure everyone knew what he was saying as he was reading the papers from the hospital. Because of that, Reynir's expression announced bad news before Mikkel repeated it in Danish. The second Emil heard it, he guessed Siv's expression was probably matching Reynir's right now. He knew a cure or vaccine for the Rash was a big deal, and it was probably an even bigger one for those who could potentially catch the illness. As Emil was thinking this, Lalli slinked out from under his bed and reached for his work clothes. Emil grabbed his sweater, but didn't trying to force him back into bed:  
-Hey, what do you think you're doing? You hardly got any sleep.  
-I feel I may have missed something nearby. I need to check.  
-Okay…  
After just a few minutes outside, Lalli's return was announced by him _banging_ on the door. He ran in looking terrified, and announced that they were going to get overrun.

As he played his kantele on the dormitory's floor, Onni tried not to think of the battle raging outside, of the fact that Kokko may not answer him, and that he may meet a sooner end than he wished if she did. Reynir unfortunately couldn't be made safe the same way Tuuri could, and was watching him while sitting in the least exposed corner of the room with the kitten in his lap, as he really couldn't do much else. The musical part of the summon was finished, he moved to the runo. Kokko answered.

One second, Onni was engulfed in flames. The next, both Onni and the flames had vanished, leaving a scorched floor and whatever that musical instrument was called behind. Reynir heard a strange noise coming from outside. He hoped this was Onni's magic doing its work and that the runes he had drawn on the ground before getting dragged back inside by Mikkel were helping the others, even if just a little. Before he had time to speculate any more about the noise, Kitty suddenly got extremely agitated, jumped off the bunk, and ran in small circles around Onni's instrument.

Emil didn't quite understand what had happened until he saw the dormitory's smashed floor and the troll Lalli was in the middle of cutting up into smaller pieces that would be easier to dispose of. Reynir was sitting on his bed, but otherwise motionless. Emil turned to Mikkel:  
-Is Reynir…  
-Nothing worrying happened. He was lucky.  
-But this is a small room! And a big troll! How…  
-It attacked me instead.  
Tuuri had manifested next to Mikkel. She was covered with wounds, with the most worrying being a big one on her left shoulder.  
-But you'll be alright, right? After all, you are…  
-We may not be quite human, but we can be damaged. This is why we were given actual breathing masks. But I will be able to stick around for one more week, maybe a little more.  
-And what happens after that week?  
-You might as well consider me dead.

There were, however, more pressing matters. One of them was making sure that all the trolls were dead. Emil ended up doing this alone with Kitty, as Mikkel was examining everyone else and Lalli was calling headquarters on the radio to explain what had happened. During the scanning, Emil checked the floor for places where he remembered seeing explosions during the battle, despite not having set up any explosives in those particular locations. Most of it had been trampled, but he quickly realized there had been some kind of marking on the ground that was too elaborate to be a coincidence. However, not a single copy of what he guessed to be the same drawing had been spared by the many feet that had strode the ground just a few hours ago, so he had no idea what said drawing was supposed to look like. Lalli came to meet him, a stack of papers in his hands. Something that Emil recognized as a rune was on the one on the top of the pile.  
-You got all the survivors, I checked myself. You should go help Sigrun and Mikkel. I need to go in the woods to see if these work.  
-What are these?  
-Some of the ghosts escaped. I need to go where they are hiding to see if any of Reynir's new drawings keep them away without catching fire.  
Emil was trying to figure out what to answer to that when his mind connected the dots. His pocket catching fire, the half-erased drawings, explosions happening where there had been no explosives, Reynir being outside while they were setting up the defenses when he was the one person who should _not_ have been. As he was about to ask Lalli about this, he noticed he had already left. Later that evening, Reynir drew a large rune on the back of the tank. Fixing the tank took a few extra days, but after that, they were on the road again.

Tuuri ended up being no longer needed before the moment Lalli would have had no choice but to "retire" her, as the tank ended lasting only a few more days before breaking down beyond repair. Her unreplaceable skills were driving and mechanics. Mikkel made Emil and Lalli go back to a commercial spot they had driven by earlier to scavenge some camping materials. He tried to cheer up Lalli, pointing out the good things that had come out of the expedition, including their friendship. Lalli's reaction was to get mad at him again and snub him on the way back. This kept him from finding out what, exactly, he had done wrong this time. However, the fact that they weren't talking gave Emil time to think, and an idea.

Emil gave Reynir eleven points out of ten for acting as if someone had actually died and making the whole thing feel real in the process. However, at that rate, Emil was going to get the impression that the whole set-up was for Reynir's benefit rather than Lalli's. Sigrun and Mikkel eventually figured out the solution by taking the crying Reynir along with them when they left to start doing the last preparations needed before actually starting to walk towards their pick-up spot.  
-Can you leave too? You can all go ahead, I'll catch up.  
Upon seeing Lalli stand immobile in front of the mock grave they had made for Tuuri without showing any kind of reaction, Emil had started to fear that his idea hadn't been such a good one after all. It looked like he had done one thing right, at least. He went to repeat to Sigrun what Lalli had told him, but she refused to let Lalli catch up alone. After Mikkel's intervention, they compromised by having Emil stay behind with Lalli and some supplies while Mikkel, Sigrun and Reynir went to secure the campsite for the following night.

It had started raining a little after the others had left, and Emil had ended up falling half asleep in the driver's cabin, his legs sticking out so Lalli would know he was there. Lalli came to wake him up, and told him something. Despite the fact that Lalli had apparently articulated and spoken loud enough, Emil wasn't able to understand a word he said. Later, he tried to ask Lalli something, but Lalli's answer, while short, sounded like gibberish again. This time, however, Emil realized that Lalli was speaking Finnish, and had probably had been doing so earlier as well. Emil guessed Lalli hadn't forgiven him quite yet. However, last time he had accidentally made Lalli mad, Lalli had simply stopped talking to him unless it was strictly necessary. When it had been necessary, he had used Swedish. What was with the Finnish?


	12. A mile in another man's shoes

**Chapter 11: A mile in another man's shoes**

-I'm fine. Some _morons_ put a hole here.  
Emil saw Lalli come to look into the hole, right before sitting up and noticing that every single object that had been in his shoulder bag was now outside of it. He spoke to Lalli while gathering the stuff:  
-Don't go anywhere without me. Please?  
Emil hoped Lalli understood him. As strange as it seemed, he was now seriously considering the possibility that Lalli had somehow suddenly stopped being able to communicate in Swedish. He was also wondering how his Icelandic was faring, and wanted to have Mikkel try talking with him as soon as they joined up with the others. He focused his efforts on climbing out the hole:  
-Alright, we can continue now. That was really…  
Lalli's hands on his lips kept him from finishing his sentence. When Lalli next made them walk on a still-sunny street that made them do a detour from the trail left by the others, Emil understood what was happening. The precautions unfortunately turned out to not be enough, as they soon found themselves running away from a building-sized giant and many trolls. They eventually found ice, but it quickly became too thin to support Emil. Lalli came to Emil's side, but so did the giant. Next thing Emil knew, a huge blast of light was coming from Lalli's outstretched arms, and both the giant and the icy water were being broken into many pieces. After an eternity that couldn't have actually been more than a minute, Lalli collapsed, and was unresponsive when Emil called his name. As Emil looked around him, he realized both of them were now drifting on an ice floe.

xxxx

He wasn't quite sure how he managed it, but Emil somehow got the ice floe to shore and found a house that looked empty. Once inside, he made a makeshift tent out of furniture and curtains arranged around the fireplace, in which he started a fire. He hung up their coats and gloves to dry and now needed to stand guard. After resting his eyes for just a few seconds…

As soon as he fell asleep, Reynir ran to Lalli's dream realm, but didn't find him there. He guessed Lalli was still awake, wherever he and Emil were. He suddenly realized he could take advantage of this to check something about which he had been wondering ever since the day Tuuri had appeared between him and that troll. When he had asked Tuuri about Onni while she was still "alive", her answers had been equivocal, and Lalli's non-existent. Reynir could now go check himself, and ask Onni if he had any idea where Lalli was if he found him in the usual place. He went into Lalli's protected area, the took the path he usually used to go to Onni's. Only to find nothing but dark water and dark sky. So Onni was gone for good, just as Tuuri was. He decided to go back to his own protected area to deal with the news properly.

Emil remembered that evening. It had been one of the worst in his life, but at least, the food had been good. And it had been his last good meal before the average quality of his food had taken a brutal nosedive. He might as well enjoy it, and ignore the far-off burning buildings outside. He moved his attention from the window to the doorway to the hallway, only to realize it wasn't empty:  
-Lalli? How are you here?  
-I don't know! You're dreaming right now. Don't start being weird.  
Only then did Emil realize he was indeed dreaming, which meant he had fallen asleep. He never woke up in the middle of this dream, so he could only hope he and Lalli didn't end up dead during the night. The part where he needed to send his nanny away happened again. By the time he was done, Lalli had elected to use the kitchen's couch as a bed. Emil couldn't help noticing that he looked quite beaten up, and could probably use some rest. Lalli betrayed the fact that he hadn't fallen asleep yet by speaking:  
-I'm going to be staying here for some time. Until I find out how to get back where I belong.  
-Okay?  
Emil honestly wasn't quite sure of what Lalli meant by those words. At a loss as of what else to do, he cut a piece of cake and offered it to Lalli. Lalli first verbally refused it, but promptly sat up to grab it and eat it.  
-There are buildings on fire over there.  
With all the changes Lalli's mere presence was brining into the dream, Emil had forgotten that the couch on which he had chosen to sleep was right next to the window that gave the best view of the fire's starting point. Emil told Lalli to ignore the fire, and that he could have that nap he seemed to be aiming for, due to the dream always ending before the fire spread to his house.

Emil woke up, but Lalli didn't. Emil started to feel desperate:  
-What can I even do now? We need to get back somehow.  
- _Just start walking. Stupid._  
He promptly looked at Lalli, who was still unconscious.  
- _Wait, you just heard that? Listen, it's really me. It's complicated, but I can't try going back to my body right now. It's too dangerous. You need to find a way to take it with you. If you do the walking, I think I may be able to watch for trolls and figure out where you're supposed to go as soon as we figure out where we are.  
_ Due to his memories of the dream already fading, Emil wasn't still quite sure of what was up with the fact that he was hearing Lalli's voice in his head, but the plan seemed sound, at least for now.

xxxx

When they had figured out where they were, Lalli had come to the conclusion that the others were going to assume they were dead and hence wouldn't be waiting for them. Lalli did exactly what he said he would do, while Emil dragged his body on a makeshift sled made out of an old relatively small rug and ripped curtains. It turned out to be fairly easy, and would have been almost boring if it weren't for the fact that he was starting to get really hungry. At some point during early afternoon, Lalli had a few words that weren't instructions:  
- _Making a little noise will be okay for a while. If you have questions about this, I may answer them.  
_ Emil had had quite a few questions when the walk had begun, but Lalli had told him to avoid speaking for the next hour or so just as he had been about to ask the first one. During that time, he had started figuring a few things out for himself, to the point that his most current pressing question was quite elaborate:  
-What you're doing right now… Is how Onni and Tuuri where when they weren't uh… in their own bodies?  
Lalli stayed silent for a while before answering:  
- _Yes, I guess it would be kind of like that._  
-Second question: is there anything I can eat around here?  
- _You're not going to be any good at hunting or digging in the ground when it's so hard. Tree bark may work for you.  
_ Emil realized that he wasn't hungry enough to let go of his standards quite yet:  
-I'd rather starve. Or start eating the map.  
- _You won't be able to take me to our destination if you starve, so you'd better start with the parts we don't need anymore._

xxxx

At the end of the day, Emil was ready to find shelter for the night, and found a house that looked decent. He asked Lalli's opinion as he walked around it to locate its entrance. Lalli spoke suddenly:  
- _Stop.  
_ -Eh?  
- _I saw something in there. Keep moving. And don't look at it.  
_ What in the world Lalli didn't want him to look at?  
- _I said don't look!  
_ What Emil saw upon looking at the wall currently in front of him looked like ghosts as they were depicted in storybooks, but with the general shape of trolls.  
-I… Uh…  
Lalli's voice now sounded alarmed as he spoke:  
- _Hello! Did you forget how walking works? Keep moving!_  
He heard another voice that wasn't Lalli's in his head:  
- _You… You can see us… You can hear us…  
_ Lalli's voice again:  
- _Hey! Don't listen to it!  
_ The other voice wanted help. It wanted Emil to kill it. He could do that. He let go of the ripped curtains he had been using to pull the sled and pulled his rifle out while walking towards the house's entrance. He vaguely heard Lalli's voice claiming he was walking into a trap and to get away, but the other one was louder, and more convincing. He suddenly got a splitting headache, that hurt so much that he could no longer stand upright. He heard the voice from the house again:  
- _Come closer._  
Lalli's voice came again, much clearer than before:  
- _Come back! Give up. I won't stop doing that.  
_ Emil protested:  
-I… I just wanted to help them.  
Lalli's voice answered:  
- _No, they've gotten into your head. You'd realize you're about to kill us both otherwise. You need to trust me.  
_ Emil managed to get up, put his rifle away, grab the sled and take it away from the house. He could still faintly hear the voice from the house:  
- _No, don't leave us.  
_ He briefly worried about trolls from the house following them, but Lalli told him the chances were slim due to them "feeling stuck". He also told Emil he would be able to block out the voices Emil was still hearing once they would be further away. He also spotted promising houses further down the road. As he was walking towards the handful of houses in question, a realization about what had just happened hit him; Lalli talked about it like someone who had had to deal with the same thing before.

As soon as he fell asleep, Emil found Lalli in his dream, eating the cake that had been served with the dinner. Emil thanked Lalli for saving him that evening, and in the process realized he hadn't thanked him for killing the giant that had chased them onto the ice yet, which he corrected. Lalli's answer to that was a mere "okay". The next thing that worried Emil was the risk of the trolls doing to Lalli what they had just done to him. Lalli reassured him that he was trained to resist it, but that Emil's mind was "too open" and that his mere presence in his dream made him a target in the first place. This brought them back to the fact that Lalli had no idea how to return to his body without risking dying for good, and his worry about what could happen if his body died while he was in Emil's dream. Emil promised to do what he could to get both of them to the extraction point alive, and that someone would probably be able to help once they would be there. Concerning his ability to speak Swedish, Lalli explained that his level seemed to have reverted to a point where he could understand some, but no longer speak it after Tuuri's "death".  
-Maybe I can help with that once you are better. And maybe you could teach me a little Finnish while we're at it.  
After a few moments of silence, Lalli spoke:  
-I… just realized I should thank you too. For not leaving me behind and trying to help.  
Emil realized it had been the first time Lalli had actually thanked him for something, and got excited about it, which seemed to rub Lalli the wrong way:  
-If you're going to be this weird about it, I'm not doing it ever again!  
-That's okay, once is plenty.  
-Good. By the way, what is this place? It's big like your uncle and aunt's place, but it's too different and it's not as closely surrounded by other houses. That woman who is preparing you food looks like she's not your mother and there's too much food for one person.  
It took this for Emil to realize that he hadn't shared that much about this part of his life with Lalli, while he felt he knew more about Lalli's past than someone who had only known him for a few weeks was entitled to. He realized it was a good time to make up for it:  
-This was my home when I was a child. And it's not that _much_ food. It's a _normal_ …  
Emil suddenly realized that if he continued speaking, he would doing little more than pointing out to Lalli how much better off he had been compared to Lalli and how much older than him he had been when he had gotten the first really bad day in his life. He wanted to share the full story of that evening with Lalli someday, but tonight felt nowhere near the right time to do it.  
-It's fine, it doesn't really matter.  
He tried to find another conversation topic, to discuss with Lalli, but soon realized hos exhausted the day had made him, and fell asleep.


	13. Old and new family

**Chapter 12: Old and new family**

How much smaller the map was compared to a few days ago was a testimony of what Emil had had to resort to have something to eat. Lalli's voice spoke in his head:  
- _Are we going to get there today?  
_ Emil evaluated his own physical state, and gave an honest answer:  
-I don't think so. My feet are about to fall off.  
- _I'm worried that my body will deteriorate if I'm like this for too long.  
_ Emil knew this was a worry. He had done all he could to keep Lalli's body unharmed, but there was only so much he could do. His best hope for real care was to get Lalli to the pick-up spot and have Mikkel take care of anything that he hadn't been able to prevent. But time wasn't on their side, and they were probably at the point where mere hours could make a difference. The thought somehow gave him enough energy to get up and start dragging Lalli again. He heard something similar to the troll voice from a few days ago, except that it was actually a voice and not something in his head:  
-FoOd?  
Emil tried finding the source, only to have his eyes settle on a nearby house's open doorway, where something that was definitely a troll was lurking:  
-HeLLo FooD.  
Very funny. He didn't even have any food for himself. He promptly informed the troll he didn't have any food for it.  
-hEllO, fOod.  
Oh, now he understood.  
-What? No, _I'm_ not food.  
Lalli's exasperated voice chimed in:  
- _Why are you talking to it?  
_ Come to think of it, he had a point.  
- _Remember how we practiced focusing your mind? So this time, me and Tuuri went to the northern part of the island to look for blueberries.  
_ This was the part where Emil was supposed to show he was listening:  
-Blueberries, got it.  
- _And I didn't even want to go because I hate blueberries, so I…  
_ - _FoOd? wHy arE YoU leaving, fOOd? Yum, yUm, yuM, YUm, YuM!  
_ Emil realized that the "yums" had actually been coming closer, and that the troll from the house was now coming after him:  
-What? It's broad daylight, you're not supposed to come outside!  
While the troll had been fine in the shaded space, it recoiled at the strip of direct sunlight between it and Emil. The closer look enabled Lalli to identify the troll as a type that can start roaming at dusk, and strongly suggest him to get as far away from the troll as possible, promising to tell Emil if it continued following via the nearby shaded strip of woods. Emil got a better idea, which consisted of getting a bullet inside the troll's head immediately. By the time Lalli started telling him to not do it, Emil had already pulled the trigger. He realized his mistake when a large number of similar trolls came out of the house. A quick consultation with Lalli revealed that there were now only two ways he could survive the night. One was running fast enough, something that he was unable to, even if he left Lalli's body behind. The other was to bunker up.

xxxx

They had found a house, and barricaded themselves in it. The trolls had found them, and had tried to make Emil open the door. Thanks to Lalli's solution to prevent this from happening, Emil was now unconscious in the real world, and back in his dream of the night of the fire:  
-I hope you do realize that we're very deeply extremely vulnerable like this. If even one of them gets in, we're done for.

Emil was right. Lalli had to leave Emil's secure space for at least one of them to make it out alive. He did need something from Emil, however:  
-Do nothing until I'm gone. You have to focus on that. Do. Not. Move.  
He let Emil wake up again before he could protest, then started to look for a way out. He eventually found an exit in the form of a trap door to the ceiling. It looked like he could reach the mage layer of the dreamscape if he swam towards the surface. He did just that, all while hoping none of the rogue spirits roaming the waters would notice him. Unfortunately, a very big and powerful one did, just as he was about to reach the surface. Lalli wasn't powerful enough to keep it from crushing him with its huge snake-like body. So that was it. He was going to die here. Looking up to the surface of the water, he could see the Swan of Tuonela coming for him. Maybe it was best that way. What was left of his family was gone anyway, he might as well join them. The point where resisting was any use was long gone. He was feeling kind of sleepy. He really hoped Emil would be able to make it through the night. He let himself doze off.

Somehow, he woke up again, able to breathe properly. A voice that he never thought he'd hear again spoke to him:  
-I was waiting for a moment where I could have the Swan take me instead of you. This won't happen a second time. You need to wake up in the real world, or that second time may come for too soon, for both you and your friend.  
Lalli managed to crack his eyes open just in time to see the Swan of Tuonela fly away, a much smaller white bird in tow. A white bird that wasn't him. Onni's voice had told him what to do.

Lalli woke up to see that Emil had moved rooms and that they were now in the house's bathroom. He figured that their main barricade had fallen, and sound confirmed that the dusklings were right outside the locked bathroom door. As he tried standing up, Emil spoke to him:  
-Well, I'm glad to see you one last time.  
Lalli got a spell of dizziness and heaving, and half-listened to Emil's rambling about the situation, according to which they were completely surrounded, as he let it pass. Lalli knew this was true when it came to the door, but he couldn't help but check the bathroom window for himself. The coast turned out to be clearer than when Emil had checked a little earlier, due to all dusklings now being inside the house. He couldn't start trying to comprehend why they had thought this was a better idea than having some stay outside, but the important part was that they had a chance to run away. They took it. The dusklings noticed their escape much faster than Lalli would have liked. As he was overcome with a spell of dizziness and a reminder that Emil didn't have much endurance in short succession, he realized they needed a plan. As the reached a cluster of houses, Lalli spotted a plastic barrel just big enough to fit the two of them, sensed a giant under a nearby house, and noticed that Emil still carried a couple of explosive charges. He grabbed the explosives, tossed them inside the house containing the giant, and got himself and a reluctant Emil inside the plastic barrel. The giant he awoke stabbed the barrel, but they both managed to move their bodies in the right direction, at the right time. After that, it left them alone and focused on the dusklings. After a while, things calmed down enough for both of them to be able to fall asleep.

That night, they both dreamed that they were inside the plastic barrel, except that a bunch of small animals was in there with them. Emil suggested one of them wake up to make sure the barrel was closed in the real world, and Lalli had found himself unable to argue with the fact that Emil had more sleep to catch up on than he did. It was only a few minutes into his improvised night watch that Lalli found a reason for which Emil being the one to stay asleep was a problem: it was going to prevent Reynir from finding out that they were still both still alive and informing Sigrun of the fact. However, after extra thought, he realized that making sure both of them survived the night while letting Emil catch up on some sleep was more important than having the others know they were coming before they actually got there. He only hoped he had gauged the time correctly, and that there were indeed still at least couple of days left before the boat came.

xxxx

The next morning, Lalli opened the barrel to see that the giant had gone back to its dwelling, which was near enough that its tail was sticking out of the ruined house. He woke up Emil and both of them got away from the place as fast as possible. Only reaching a shoreline separated from the town by woods made them stop. Emil went into an extremely enthusiastic rambling, that went on for long enough for Lalli to start falling asleep standing up before getting woken up by a punch in the arm. He remembered that it was supposed to be a gesture of affection just in time to not violently retaliate, as Emil apologized for forgetting he wasn't particularly fond of friendly punches. Lalli realized that nothing actually kept him from giving Emil a friendly punch, and it would save him the trouble of choosing between the many things that he wanted to tell him, all which he could barely remember how to say in Swedish anyway. He went for punch much lighter than the one Emil had given him, then promptly had a spell of dizziness and heaving that was bad enough make him collapse right next to his mess. This was more than enough to remind them that they needed to get to where the others were as fast as possible.

It wasn't long before they saw smoke, and some kind of stone harbor separated from the mainland by a chain-link fence with a hole in it. Finding the building in which the others were staying wasn't hard, as Mikkel opened its door to greet them. Emil started asking him something, but didn't have time to finish before Mikkel wrapped both of them into a hug. Lalli had never liked hugs very much, but this one felt strangely good. Emil asking for a bath, Sigrun yelling something in Norwegian and Lalli having an extra heaving spell that resulted in Emil's clothes needing cleaning even more than they already did cumulatively resulted in the hug being broken so they could both have a bath and a medical check-up. After that, Mikkel gave them both a little food, explaining that they would need to start by eating very little at a time if they hadn't eaten much in the past few days. Lalli was about to have his last bite of food when he realized that he no longer sensed the presence of the ghosts that they had picked up a few days into the expedition. He was about to ask Reynir about it, when he realized that he seemed to have mostly "lost" his Icelandic, as well. Maybe there would be a way to get an explanation when they would be both asleep.

xxxx

Right when it looked like they were going to leave Reynir's house after having spent a few weeks there, it turned that his sister was going to get married a little earlier than initially planned, so her other siblings could attend before they had to go back to work. That had resulted in it happening the day before Lalli, Emil, Mikkel and Sigrun were to go back to the big town with the port to leave Iceland. Lalli somehow ended up losing track of all the faces that were familiar to him, to the point that finding a group of youths that included the sister of Reynir's who wasn't getting married had been an upgrade. He hoped that by sticking with them, he would eventually run into a slightly more familiar face. In the meantime, just copying whatever the group was doing seemed a good way to not draw too much unwanted attention. The tagging along continued as Lalli sat through the actual wedding ceremony. Soon after, for some reason, the sister who was getting married turned her back to the crowd and threw the bouquet of flowers she had been holding. The thing almost landed on Lalli's head, but he fortunately managed to catch it before that happened. He soon discovered that this also meant he was allowed to keep it for as long as it could be reasonably kept for. The scrawniest of Reynir's brothers, who had been spending time with a group of his own, came to speak to the sister to whom Lalli had attached himself. Emil turned out to have lost the others as well, and to have done exactly what Lalli had done, only with a different sibling of Reynir's. They found a place to go sit together, and Lalli tried to find a conversation topic:  
-Are you still sad that Sigrun is taking the cat with her?  
-A little, but less than a few days ago. But let's talk about this, rather. Do you have someone in mind, or did you just catch it because it was coming towards you?  
Lalli noticed Emil was pointing at the bouquet.  
-I should be having someone in mind for what?  
-Some places believe that whoever gets the bride's bouquet will be the next to get married. Or at least will be doing it sooner rather than later.  
Lalli was almost tempted to let go of the bouquet in shock. Before that expedition, things such as getting married had been non-existent in his horizon due to the social isolation that had been enforced by the Keuruu higher-ups and his own lack of desire to interact with people more than necessary. Those things were now an option again, but currently he wasn't sure whether he wanted them for himself or not. That would something to think of during the next Swedish cleansing season, during which he had promised to give working at Emil's side a try.


End file.
